Scarlet Scroll
by SilverShine
Summary: Danzou's regime has become powerful and immutable. To restore Konoha to its former glory, he demands many sacrifices from its citizens, and in his ambition to steal the bloodlines of other villages, Sakura has become one such sacrifice. KakaSaku. AUish.
1. In Principio

**A/N:** This is based off the '_Fraud'_ short I did for chapter 6 of the 'Spring Rain and Winter Storms' collection of ficlets (you can find it in my profile). Originally it was going to be a one-shot, then it was going to be a long fic, but then it ended up being turned back into a one-shot which might explain why so many of you mentioned that you'd like to see the idea explored a bit more. I figured I'd go ahead and do just that because I'd like to explore the idea too. :D You don't need to have read the 'Fraud' one-shot to get this, but you might like to, since this is basically going to explain what the hell was going on in that fic.

**Longer Summary (because 255 characters is not enough to summarise a parsnip):** Years have passed since Pein's invasion of Konoha when Tsunade fell, and Danzou's regime has become powerful and immutable. To restore Konoha to its former glory, he demands many sacrifices from its citizens, and in his ambition to steal the bloodlines of other villages and create a new generation of Konoha shinobi formed from all the strongest clans in the land, Sakura becomes one such sacrifice. In the darkest depths of subterfuge and despair, Kakashi is her only anchor... and her one way out.

* * *

**Scarlet Scroll**

In Principio

* * *

"Mating behaviours?" repeated Kakashi.

He peered up incredulously at the youth standing in front of the park bench upon which he had artfully slouched_. Icha Icha Paranoia _hung from his hand, momentarily forgotten now that Sai had so considerately stopped by to block the light of the sunset and cast a shadow over the text of his book before proceeding to pop one of his notoriously awkward questions. He had few opportunities these days to enjoy such small, simple pleasures as an evening stroll and a chapter of his favourite book before bedtime, and he didn't exactly appreciate when others insisted on depriving him of even that. It showed in his tone.

"Yes," said Sai, who had always been oblivious to these nuances of communication. "Mating behaviours. I have been reading up on courtship rituals recently and I've made some observations, but I still don't fully understand the experience. I was hoping you could assist me."

Kakashi returned his gaze to his book with an air of finality. "You're not my type."

"You misunderstand. I only wish for you to speak of your experiences," Sai said, inviting himself into the seat beside him on the bench. "I witnessed you debating another jonin from the W.D. yesterday about scroll sealing methods. Of the six physical signals of courtship, you were demonstrating five."

"Physical signals?"

"Dilated pupils, tendency to smile, encroach upon her personal space, mirror her movements, and maintain eye contact. She exhibited all six, including playing with herself to try and draw your attention to her mouth and other assets."

Kakashi nodded thoughtfully, looking up at the deep pink sky as if suddenly hit by an epiphany. "That probably explains why we went out to dinner last week."

"So you _are_ courting?" Sai asked, surprised that his observations had proven correct. "Was it the first date?"

"Second."

"Then," he said slowly, following the logical pattern, "you have proceeded to Second Base?"

"...only by accident when I was helping her put her coat on." Kakashi shrugged. "What's the matter? You're looking a little confused over there, Sai."

"You don't seem to follow the traditional pattern of courtship," the younger man said dubiously, as if Kakashi wasn't being very considerate. "It is said that on the first date a kiss is to be expected, and on the second date-"

"There is no pattern, Sai. Everyone's making it up as they go along," Kakashi drawled. "Courtship depends on the person being courted; you can't pull fast moves on someone who isn't ready."

"So, she wasn't ready?" Sai deduced.

Kakashi's gaze wandered back to his book. "Who said _she_ was the one being courted?" he murmured.

Sai paused in wonderment. He had obviously yet to come across anything in his books about women being anything other than the passive targets of courtship. "I fear I've made an oversight."

"Here," Kakashi said compassionately, reaching into his hip ouch to withdraw a second book. "Read this. It'll tell you all you need to know about courtship, and plenty more things you don't."

"Icha... Icha... Tactics..." read Sai slowly.

"Let's both agree that Jiraiya-sama's experience, rest his soul, will be more fruitful than anything I could give you, so I will loan you my own personally beloved copy." He marvelled at his own generosity, but when Sai began to open it curiously he touched the boy's shoulder and leaned in to whisper, "_Break the spine, and I _will_ break yours_."

Handling the book like a precious artefact from a lost age, which Kakashi was seriously convinced it was, Sai stood, already halfway into the first page. He took a step away from the bench as if to continue on his way, but then paused and turned back. "When it says 'guaranteed to catch pussy," he began, "does that mean courtship success is correlated to how many cats you possess?"

"Ah, well..." Kakashi touched his chin and wondered how to answer that, and was spared by a passing blur of pink. Both he and Sai turned their heads automatically to watch the progression of the girl in the medical uniform as she strode away along the park's path, hair falling lose from its pins and bouncing with every furious step. That she hadn't appeared to notice them was a little strange. For a moment Kakashi thought about calling her name and finding out what had put such a savage edge in her stride. Then he glimpsed something small and bright red in her hand, and whatever he'd been about to say dried up in his throat. He frowned and looked away.

Sai continued to watch the disappearing figure with mild curiosity. "Sakura-san seems to be exhibiting at least three of the five physical signals of distress: increased heart-rate, rapid breathing, and dissociation with one's environment," he observed. "What do you suppose is the matter?"

"I'm sure it's nothing," said Kakashi with a faint shrug before he returned to his page of Icha Icha Paranoia.

* * *

_1 hour Earlier_

"Do you think these buns taste a little stale today?" Sakura pondered aloud, rubbing her two bread rolls together as if she expected them to produce sparks.

Ino snapped hers into increasingly smaller halves without comment, her gaze fixed on a point in the distance upon something that didn't exist within this cafeteria. The other female medics around the table just shrugged and grunted. They were thirteen hours into a sixteen hour shift, and none of them found the humour in dry remarks about dry bread.

Sakura bit down on one of her buns and chewed, wondering if there was much difference in texture between this lump of bread and a seashell. This was, if truth be told, about as entertaining as her _very_ long day would get, if not her week. She had once enjoyed her work at the hospital, viewing it as a challenging experience that broke up the monotony of field assignments with her team and administrative work with her shishou; something that kept her medical skills sharp and her people skills warm. But nowadays... hospital shifts were _all_ she did. After months and months of the same daily grind, she had long since lost her enthusiasm for the job.

She supposed she should count herself lucky. She'd never found working in the hospital tedious or stressful, unlike Ino and a few of the other women medics who probably wouldn't have dabbled with medical jutsu at all if they'd known that this was the direction their careers would take. They were all in the same boat now, resigned to the same fate. At least they might still be better off than the regular kunoichi...

"Three more h-hours," said Hinata, stammering through a terrifically wide yet dainty yawn, "then we can sleep."

Some of those around the table hadn't bothered to wait. Shizune's head had been buried in her arms for the past twenty minutes, emitting a suspicious snoring sound. Sakura flicked crumbs at her half-heartedly, littering the older woman's hair with flakes of bread until one particularly heavy crumb landed on her hand. Shizune grumbled and lifted her head to glower at Sakura, crumbs running off her in all directions.

Then Shizune's gaze slid past her and suddenly her eyes widened. In fact a lot of the women around the table had stopped yawning and picking at their meagre food to turn and stare at something over Sakura's shoulder.

"Haruno Sakura."

Her heart sank a little as she turned slowly and surveyed the two ANBU men standing behind her. Root members. You could always tell from the acid green ribbons that held their masks on or adorned their uniform in other ways. Once upon a time, it would have been a rare sight to see a member of the ANBU Root division walking around the village in broad daylight. Now you could hardly walk down a single street without seeing those pale masks and green ribbons watching you silently from the rooftops. Their presence was everywhere, and you either learned to live with it, or you didn't.

Live, that is.

"Yes?" said Sakura coolly, making sure to sound patient and respectful.

"You're to come with us," said the ANBU with the mouse mask. "The Hokage wants to speak with you."

"About?" she asked.

The two men stared at her. They had delivered her summons and now they expected her, having learned of the Hokage's command, to drop everything and sprint to the administration office like a greyhound. That she had the nerve to obstinately question the motives of the village leader was tantamount to treason in their eyes, yet she'd been careful to frame the question as innocently and politely as possible.

"You're to come with us," they simply repeated, and one of them took a step forward to forcefully pull her chair away from the table so that she would get the hint to stand.

Sakura glimpsed the faces of the other women around the table, all of them carefully blank and schooled, and only the disappearance of all signs of tiredness made it obvious they were worried. They were just lowly medic nin, slaves to the hospital; the Hokage didn't bother much with their kind, and indeed Sakura hadn't met or spoken to the Hokage in more than two years, not since he'd ascended to his position. As a member of the previous Hokage's regime and one of the people who had been closest to her, she had been ejected soundly from her place in the administration once he'd taken over. Out with the old, in with the new. The antipathy was mutual of course, but Sakura was left wondering what she had done to make the Hokage notice her all of a sudden. She'd always been so careful to avoid trouble.

"I'll be back in a little while," she said to the other women, to reassure them as much as herself. "Please cover for me."

She got up and fell into step behind the two members of Root. They swept through the corridors ahead of her in an unnerving march, as if they were machines instead of independent people. It was an apt comparison. She'd learnt from Sai everything that went on in Root... how these men were trained... how they were purged of emotion and had their tongues branded to ensure their loyalty and silence.

They escorted her to the administration office like she was some kind of convict on her way to prosecution. It wasn't a reassuring mood. Once at the door of the Hokage's office they told her to sit down and wait, and there she sat for over half an hour, flanked by the men from Root who sat as still as stone gargoyles. She didn't mention how rude it was, to summon someone urgently to your office and then keep them waiting so long. Sakura wasn't eager to meet with the Hokage, but sitting there in utter silence and stillness as the apprehension built inside her with every passing minute was making an unpleasant situation even more agonising.

Finally the door clicked open and another Root with a horned mask beckoned them inside. Sakura stood up on legs she could no longer feel and walked into the office.

It wasn't as she remembered. Half this building had been destroyed and rebuilt after the Great Invasion, and now the Hokage's office seemed five times as large, and ten times as opulent. This was less of an office and more of a throne room, for where before had once been a plain desk and a window that surveyed the Konoha skyline were now a semi-circle of chairs and a concrete wall bearing the five symbols of the Root creed: _Our Unity_, the branches; _Our Strength_, the trunk; _Our People_, the leaves; _Our Future; _the seed; _Our Perfection_, the tree with its exposed roots. Before this tree sat the largest and most ornate of the chairs in the middle of the semi-circle, and upon this sat the Hokage. In the chairs to either side sat his most trusted, most rewarded advisors and friends whose job it was to administrate the village according to the will of the Hokage... and apparently the Hokage willed for nothing more than his friends and advisors to seize whatever money or assets they liked from those they presided over for their own personal use.

The Root ANBU steered her to stand in the middle of the room, facing the Hokage and then retreated. Sakura knew the expected routine even if it was the first time she was to do it. Without looking once at the man in the throne, she got to her knees and bowed till her forehead almost touched the ground, fingers poised in a perfect V on the floor before her.

"Do you know why you have been summoned, Haruno Sakura?" asked the Hokage.

"I do not, Danzou-sama," she said respectfully, ignoring the instinct to lift her head up and look at him as she responded. A person could get into a lot of trouble if they assumed they had leave to rise without the Hokage's express permission.

"We have a mission for you, Haruno-san," he said.

Sakura's heart almost jumped in her chest. A mission? Female medic-nin didn't get missions anymore, not since Danzou had decided in his endlessly benign wisdom that it wasn't seemly and only male medics could accompany teams on active duty. Even regular kunoichi didn't get many missions. They were relegated to the ranks of the W.D. – the Women's Division – second-class fighters who got whatever missions were left over, which ranked them somewhere behind 'chunin' even if many of the kunoichi had once been jonin of the highest callibre.

"I gladly undertake any mission the Hokage wishes," Sakura said formally.

"Sit up, Haruno-san."

Sakura sat back on her knees carefully, although made sure to keep her eyes on the hem of Danzou's robes. His feet were peeping out from beneath them and she witnessed the gnarled nails of his toes – some of which appeared to be missing. Perhaps some kind of fungal infection? And those lumpy swellings looked like the beginning of gout.

Her diagnosis was interrupted when one of the Root ANBU walked into her field of vision and placed something on the ground in front of her. The moment she saw it, she stiffened.

"Are you aware of what this is?" Danzou drawled, and although she couldn't tear her eyes away from the object she could tell he was smirking in foul amusement.

This had to be a joke. For a fleeting absurd moment she thought someone would laugh and shout "Gotcha!" and then they'd all laugh and she'd be handed her actual mission, but the heavy silence rang on and on and on. This was a joke, alright, but _she_ was the punch line.

Why her? _Oh_ _god,_ _why did it have to be her?_

Sakura's mouth moved but for a while she couldn't speak. Every set of eyes in the room was fixed on her, boring into her, waiting for her to react; she could _feel_ their sick amusement. Not one of them cared. Not one of them sympathised. _Not_ _one._

"Surely you know what this is," Danzou continued kindly like an indulgent old uncle.

She forced her voice to obey. "A-a... an X-class mission," she said, feeling queer and detached, as if she was standing behind herself as she stared at the totally innocuous red scroll. It lay on the floor three feet away, resting on its mahogany ends, its parchment so vivid it looked like it had been soaked in blood.

She had heard rumours that the X-class missions had returned. With everything else that had happened she had believed it tentatively, though she had never knowingly met anyone who'd received one.

But it was not that the red scroll signified an X-class mission alone – in fact she'd never known mission classes to be colour-coded. The scarlet scroll held a very specific meaning, and she hardly dared believe it. There had been no rumour of _these_ missions returning. She had doubted they'd even existed! This was the stuff of urban legend.

And now she was staring right at it.

"Only very special kunoichi receive the scarlet scroll, Haruno-san," Danzou murmured. "You should be honoured to have been selected. I hope you accept..."

Her eyes flicked briefly up to his. She had a choice? Did she dare believe that?

"Hokage-sama," she whispered, "I don't understand. I've never heard before of anyone in this village receiving a scarlet-"

"That's because this is a program of the utmost secrecy," he said, staring down at her unblinkingly. "Times have changed and we have need once again for brave kunoichi such as yourself to make sacrifices if this village is to survive. Only those who are involved have knowledge of its existence. If any uninitiated persons are made aware of it... they are terminated. With that in mind, I do hope once again that you accept."

His cronies chuckled darkly to themselves and Sakura fought down a flare of disbelieving rage. What choice did she have now? He'd personally made her aware of the existence of scarlet scrolls by damn well handing one to her, and now he'd as good as told her that if she refused to be initiated she would die because she knew too much.

The Hokage leaned forward, his large bony hand gripping his armrest tightly. For a shinobi he was unusually weak in body, but he possessed other weapons and influence that made him more deadly than any man or woman in this village. _"Do_ you accept, Haruno-san?" he asked, his stare intense.

Sakura looked at the scroll and wondered if she might be better off dead anyway.

"I accept," she said quietly. Whether it was cowardice or bravery, she didn't know. There would be time later to decide which... and not so much if she had chosen death.

"Excellent," he muttered, reclining once more with an expression nothing short of gleeful. "Take your scroll. Take it."

Sakura reached out and picked it up gingerly as if certain the deep red dye would stain her skin and never wash off ever again. The wax seal glinted in the low light, revealing the embossed 'X' .

"All the mission details are there," the Hokage informed her. "Do not divulge the information to anyone else. They will be killed too."

"I understand, Hokage-sama," she rasped, her throat suddenly hoarse and dry.

"Your handler for this assignment will approach you tomorrow. That is all."

Sakura almost laughed out loud. A handler? Could kunoichi not even undertake X-class missions without supervision? She spat out a bitter, "_Thank you, Hokage-sama_," and rose on legs that felt heavy and awkward. She stumbled to the door and didn't look back. Although she heard nothing, she _knew_ they were laughing at her, and the silent laughter pursued her out onto the evening street outside, chasing her as she stormed through the park on her way home. She gave little thought to her destination; she was simply moving on the primal instinct to return home, to return to safety, forgetting there was still work for her at the hospital and only vaguely noticing that she passed Sai and someone else on the way.

The laughter was still ringing hysterically in her ears even as she slammed through the door of her own apartment. She threw the scroll on the floor she was so careful to keep clear and tidy, and there it rolled to a stop against the leg of her coffee table. In this square one-room flat there was no hiding from it. Sakura dropped onto her bed and lay facing the wall, trying to convince herself that it was actually alright... she had simply been driven insane by the long hours at the hospital and the meeting that had just transpired with the Hokage was nothing but a figment of her own imagination.

She looked over her shoulder. The evidence of her sanity peeped around the table leg, utterly cruel and terrifying in how mundane and harmless it was. It was hard to accept that something as plain as a scroll could ruin her whole life.

* * *

By the time that Sakura had been born, X-class missions had been abolished in Konoha for many years. These kinds of missions had, they said, amounted to little more than prostitution, and unlike the other missions which were given according to rank and experience, the only requirement of X-class assignments was to be 18 or older.

Most of Sakura's early knowledge of such missions had been gleaned from books and TV that always liked to romanticise the old days, where war was constant and kunoichi were not particularly capable fighters but certainly the most beautiful women. Jiraiya's _Icha Icha_ series was the worst offender. His books appeared to be set in a parallel universe full of non-existent countries and imaginary villages that was roughly a hundred years behind this world in terms of technology and social advancement. It was a world full of S-class ninja men and X-class kunoichi, and it just wasn't an _Icha Icha_ book unless the hero got off with a beautiful woman, only to later learn she was a deadly enemy kunoichi who had been sent to seduce and betray him.

The reality of X-class assignments was less glamorous. If beautiful kunoichi were ever sent out to seduce and make love to gorgeous men for the purpose of stealing his secret scrolls, they were a tiny, very lucky minority. If a real kunoichi wanted a man's top secret scrolls she was more likely to skip the seduction and merely bludgeon him into unconsciousness or _death_ before moving on to rifle through his belongings at leisure. It hadn't been until she'd spent a week helping Shizune reorganise a backlog of fifty year old mission reports that she'd come to truly understand what X-class meant.

According to the reports, sometimes it meant being commissioned by an influential figure like a daimyo to sleep with one of his opponents, particularly married opponents, and produce the pictures to prove it, ruining the opponent's reputation. If the target wasn't willing there were always ways to get around it, such as drugging them and straddling their naked body to pose for the camera. However, it seemed that quite often kunoichi used the drugs as their first choice, and recent advancements in photographic trickery did most of the work these days.

Mostly X-class missions had meant straight-up prostitution. Ninja were mercenaries above all else, but providing you had the money, you could commission ninja for anything, whether it was assassinating a political rival or rescuing a cat from a tree, and there was no shortage of wealthy, lonely patrons willing to pay top price for a night with a beautiful, deadly kunoichi.

And theoretically, perhaps, it had also meant a scarlet scroll...

In all the backlogs of mission reports, Sakura had never found evidence that scarlet missions had ever been given to a Konoha kunoichi... because unlike other X-class missions which were also routinely undertaken by men, scarlet scroll missions could _only_ be taken by women.

It was barbaric.

While it in no way surprised her to think that Danzou's regime had reinstated X-class missions and essentially put Konoha's kunoichi population up for sale to the highest bidding pervert, scarlet scrolls shocked her. Here, there was no client. There was no daimyo looking to sabotage his rivals, and no lonely perverts looking to be spanked by a real dominatrix. The only client here was the Hokage and the village itself.

For a few hours that night, Sakura slept on her bed. Not even receiving the most shocking mission of her life could keep her awake after pulling a thirteen hour shift at the hospital, and she had rationalised to some degree that if she slept there was a chance that the world would have corrected itself by the time she woke up. There would be no scroll, Danzou would still be half oblivious to her existence, and she would awaken in the hospital cafeteria with bread crumbs in her hair, ready to tackle the rest of her shift, secure in the knowledge that it had all been a dream.

But when Sakura woke in the early hours of the morning to the sound of the first tweeting birds outside her window, she felt the dread even before she remembered why. The scroll was still there, resolute in its refusal to disappear, still touching the table leg exactly where she had thrown it.

For several minutes she continued to stare at it and contemplated how long she might survive as a missing-nin.

She would at least read it, she decided. It could all be a misunderstanding anyway, and she would feel a right fool if she'd planned to run away from the village over a mission that turned out to be a simple B-rank escort duty.

Crawling out of bed on her knees, Sakura sat next to the coffee table and placed the scroll on its surface. She explored the glossy texture of the parchment with her fingertips and counted the lines in the wooden tips of the roller. The wax seal was a marvel. Normally mission scrolls came with a bit of sticky tape to hold it shut, but she supposed this _was_ a scarlet scroll. As a thing of legend, perhaps Danzou felt it deserved pomp and ceremony.

She broke the seal with a snap and rolled the paper out across the table. The inner side of the parchment was a faint yellow, but horrifically the mission was printed out in red ink. It made every word seem to radiate licentiousness. Even her name printed at the top, _Haruno Sakura_, seemed to be tainted.

Taking a deep breath to prepare herself, she began to read.

...

_By accepting this mission you, Haruno Sakura, have agreed to take part in the _Seed Project, _the program created by the Rokudaime Hokage for the long-term betterment of Konoha's future. By accepting this scroll you have also agreed not to talk about your mission or the existence and aims of Project _Seed_ with persons outside the program, and understand that doing so will result in the use of lethal force against any potential information leaks. In order for Project _Seed_ to be successful, it must be conducted under terms of utmost secrecy and discretion._

_You also understand that failure to complete your assignment will result in reassignment to another partner after six months, and so on, until success is achieved. _

_..._

_ Your first target is as follows:_

_Name: _Suda Hiroshi

_Age: _48_ Height: _190.7cm_ Weight: _81.6kg_ Blood type: _AB

_Ninja registration serial no.: _006748 / jonin

_Status: _Married (Suda Kiyoko), 5 children (4 boys, 1 girl, aged 5-17)

_Residence: _Kumogakure, Lightning Country

_Desired bloodline limit: _Name unknown_. Type: _Sonic_. _

_Notes: _Your handler will provide details of how to locate and recognise Suda Hiroshi.

_..._

_Once you have made contact with the target, you will be permitted six months to maintain sexual relations until such a time as you have successfully conceived, or until the end of six months, whereupon you will be given a new target if no impregnation has occurred._

_Further details of your options will be made available upon the completion of your assignment. You may expect relocation of accommodation and other social benefits._

_..._

Sakura stopped reading and sat back.

It was exactly as she had expected. A true scarlet mission. She was being sent out to conceive the children of foreign men with desirable bloodline limits in order to introduce those bloodlines into Konoha. It was a damn _project_. How many other women would be coerced and enlisted? How many already _had_ been? No doubt Danzou expected to have a nice little fighting force within a generation or two, composed of nin selectively bred like racehorses.

Gone were the days of simply kidnapping the children of desirable foreign clans and raising them as one's own. No. _That_ had been outlawed by an international peace treaty after the last attempt on the children of the Hyuuga clan, and Konoha was too weak and Danzou too cowardly to risk breaking the treaty and inciting the united wrath of the other villages in his pursuit to strengthen his armies. But the treaty only prohibited kidnap, and so there were always ways to circumvent it, even if those ways were just as provocative if discovered.

Sakura stuffed the scarlet scroll beneath her mattress and for a long time she sat on the floor, her head in her hands as sunlight crept over the windowsill and along the floor. Hours were passing away outside her room, but time had frozen for Sakura.

The answer was obvious to her; she would have to leave Konoha. If her only use to her village now was to act as broodmare, she would rather take her chances as a missing-nin. She perhaps should have left months ago when it had first become clear that the village was heading down a dark path beneath Danzou, but Naruto had warned her not to, and in truth she'd been a little afraid.

The average life expectancy of a missing-nin was only three weeks.

It had not seemed a worthwhile risk back then, but now... she wondered if it really was better to die with some semblance of freedom and dignity before submitting to such a cruel scheme. Because it wasn't just herself that would be violated. After all, what kind of life would a child of such a union have?

A smart knock on her apartment door drew her from her catatonic state, and her heart began hammering against her ribs before she understood why. Hadn't Danzou said her handler would contact her today? Was this it?

The knock came again, but she remained rooted to the floor. She hoped, a little desperately, that if her handler thought she was out and he went away, the whole thing might be forgotten and she'd be allowed to get back to fixing broken bones and cleaning bedpans and generally still pretending she was proud to be a medic nin in this day and age.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Sakura pressed her hands over her head. _Go away, _she thought, trying to compel the person on the other side of the door with her mind alone. _Go away, go away, go away!_

"Sakura?"

She almost sagged in relief. _Almost._ Although she knew and trusted that voice, she realised she was in no fit state to entertain friends right now. Nevertheless she forced herself up and crossed to the door. She tried putting on a smile as she opened it. "Kakashi-sensei?"

He stared at her wordlessly for a moment, as if measuring the authenticity of that smile the way a jeweller analysed sometone's attempt to pass off a flint as a diamond. "I saw you last night," he began. "You looked a little upset, so I thought..."

That he'd come round to cheer her up? Now Sakura was the one staring. Kakashi, despite his deceptively vague appearance, had the sharpest sense of empathy of anyone she knew, but she also knew this didn't always equate to caring. If something was bothering his team, he would be the first to recognise it and say 'get over it, we've a job to do'. For him to approach her at home out of concern... well, he'd never darkened her doorway before, _period._ And after Danzou's implementation of the command that female medic-nin limit their work to the hospital and leave missions to their much more capable male contemporaries, they hadn't worked together for quite a while.

She must have looked pretty upset if she'd moved even her sensei's implacable heart.

"I'm ok," she said, though it felt like a horrible screaming lie. In truth she wanted to grab him and tell him everything – tell him what they were going to make her do – and beg that he help her get out of it in some way. But Danzou's cold words kept her contained. _"Do not divulge the information to anyone else. They will be killed too."_

She didn't want to force that risk on Kakashi.

Yet, for some reason, he didn't seem to believe her muttered words. "Can I come in at least?" he asked.

She thought of the scroll buried beneath her mattress, safely hidden from sight, and she nodded. "I guess." What he couldn't see wouldn't hurt him.

Kakashi closed the door after himself and with him standing there, Sakura became aware of just how small her apartment was, since he was already taking up most of the space. In three strides she crossed the room to the bed; it was the only place to sit. In two strides, Kakashi joined her, and even if he wasn't the first male to be invited to her bed, she was faintly shy of the fact that he was her former team captain and teacher.

"Sorry," she said, as he took his seat next to her. "It's not exactly fit for entertaining."

"It's nice," said Kakashi with the kind of lightness that made it plain he was only being polite. "I've never seen your apartment before."

"I'm surprised you know where I live," she remarked with a faint smile.

"Someone told me," he replied, examining her small coffee table, which along with the bookcase was the only other furniture in this room besides the bed. "It's been a while, hasn't it?" he murmured.

"Yeah," she sighed. "I've been so busy at the hospital lately..."

"You enjoying it much?"

Not at all. "I suppose."

It was difficult to talk this way, of polite nothings while something so huge raged inside her. The scarlet scroll lay beneath them both, hidden from sight but not from Sakura's mind. It didn't seem right that while Kakashi's gaze casually roved over her modest possessions, she could see nothing but vivid red.

"I hear the W.D. is putting its case to the council again," Kakashi said. "Perhaps there's still room for Danzou to be persuaded to allow kunoichi full access to missions again. It would be nice. It's not really been the same since you left the team..."

"Yeah," she said, her voice growing weaker. "It would be nice to be a team again."

But that would probably never happen now.

Kakashi finished his sweep of her room to returned his steady gaze to her. "Where is it?" he asked.

Sakura blinked. A tingle of unease crawled along the back of her neck. "Where's what?"

"The scroll," he said simply. "The one you were carrying last night."

Panic constricted around her chest like a vice, making it difficult to breath. Without looking at him she shook her head. "I wasn't carrying a scroll last night, sensei."

"It was red." He put his hand on the mattress they were sitting on. "I suppose it's under here, isn't it?"

Sakura's fingers twisted in her bedding. "Please, sensei, you have to forget you ever saw it," she whispered through lips that barely moved. "If Danzou finds out..."

"It's not really me I'm worried about," he said softly, beginning to unsnap the fastener on his pouch. "I'm glad you took his warning seriously, Sakura. One of the other women didn't... and that didn't end well for her husband, I'm sorry to say."

She barely noticed that he was taking a black scroll from his pouch and rolling it open across the coffee table. "One of the other women?" she asked quietly.

He nodded, smoothing out the parchment with his hands. "The mother of subject three," he said.

"Subject... three..." she echoed, trying to grapple with the strange way he was talking. He seemed to know a lot for such a secret program, apparently more than she did, but when she looked at the scroll he'd laid on the table the penny dropped with a resounding clang. She was staring at a detailed profile on Suda Hiroshi, complete with an old, grainy mug-shot.

"You're my handler."

* * *

TBC


	2. Almost Martyrs

**Scarlet Scroll**

Almost Martyrs

* * *

The moment he opened his door that morning to find two Root ANBU on his doorstep, giving him his summons, he'd suspected it would be about her. The Hokage called on him so very rarely, wanting to distance those closest to the previous Hokage from the inner circles of power, though he liked to keep an eye on all of them and occasionally throw out a stick to see if they obediently jumped to catch it. This was one of those occasions. He looked at the two smiling masks before him and knew he had to jump. For someone in his precarious political position, who had been favoured to succeed the last Hokage and was in the opinions of many foreign powers the rightful Hokage, he had to watch his step, for failure to obey was to expose his jugular to wolves who would only be too glad of an excuse to tear it out.

"The Hokage wants to see you," the men behind the smiling animal masks said.

At this point in the morning, Kakashi wasn't even out of his pyjamas yet. "What about?" he asked, folding his arms to squint at them. His door faced east, and the sun shone directly in his eyes. These men were little more than haloed silhouettes to him.

"You've been summoned, that's all you need to know. Be there in an hour. The Hokage does not tolerate tardiness."

They flickered away and Kakashi slammed the door, resolutely rubbing his eyes. _Breakfast_, he thought. Then a shower. Then he'd read his book. Then he'd wait until he was half an hour late before debating whether or not to step out the door.

He'd jump for his Hokage, certainly. But not until a good time after that stick had flown straight over his head.

There was no rush to find out the reason for being summoned anyway; he already knew it. He'd known he'd be approached today by Root the moment he'd seen Sakura rushing through the park with a bright red scroll in her hand last night. Hours of tossing and turning in bed, trying to convince himself that he'd been mistaken, or that she'd dropped a regular scroll inside a body during surgery at the hospital, or that it was someone else's scroll altogether... it was fruitless. He'd seen that scroll before too many times not to know what it was, what it _meant_, but seeing it then in Sakura's hand had been a shock he'd never seen coming.

_Surely_, he'd thought. _Surely, the old bastard hasn't sunk this low._

At nine-thirty he slipped out the door and made his way slowly to the administration building. But at over forty minutes late he knew he'd offended the Hokage, and in order to tacitly put him back in his place, Kakashi was kept waiting outside for a further twenty minutes. That was fine by him. He knew perfectly well that the old coot and his cronies were sitting behind that door, twiddling their thumbs. If for every minute he could be late he could make the Hokage waste his 'valuable' time being petty, Kakashi viewed his tardiness as a huge success.

Eventually Danzou decided enough time had passed and a secretary emerged from his office to bow Kakashi into the room. She was female and a civilian to boot. All the secretaries were, and it didn't surprise him. If the work was tedious and required subservience, chances were Danzou had filled every position with girls and women.

Before the semi-circle of 'thrones', he bowed. He didn't kowtow as people were often required to do before the Hokage, as he doubted anyone in that room was under the illusion he felt anything resembling respect for his superiors. His official story, however, was that he had bad knees.

"Hokage-sama," he acknowledged.

"We have another little errand for you, Hatake Kakashi," Danzou rumbled. "Tell me, how long has it been since your last assignment for Project Seed?"

Without missing a beat, Kakashi answered, "Four months, Hokage-sama."

"Ah yes. As I seem to recall, Subject three was quite the disaster, but you redeemed yourself with number four. Now I have another subject for you... I think you'll like this one." With a smug sideways smile he gestured to the personal ANBU guard beside him who stepped forward to hand Kakashi a black scroll.

Kakashi snapped it open and gave it a perfunctory glance before closing it again. He hadn't needed or wanted to look; he already knew whose name was on this scroll.

Not satisfied with as little reaction as that, Danzou needled on. "Do you approve of my choice?"

"It is as you wish, Hokage-sama," Kakashi responded neutrally. "But I would not have thought this particular candidate was suitable for your eugenics program-"

"Don't use that word, Kakashi. Our only goal is to give this stagnating village fresh blood, not to purge or purify it. And what precisely are your objections to _this_ particular candidate?" the Hokage asked, smiling nastily.

Kakashi swallowed. "Her family history is not promising. She has no ancestors or living relatives in the shinobi profession."

"Yet she is one of the strongest kunoichi of her generation, which must stand for itself, must it not?"

"Then surely she would be a loss to her profession if she were-"

"The hospital is overstaffed. We can spare a medic-nin for a few months."

"But she would not agree to this," Kakashi said shortly.

"She has already volunteered," Danzou told him.

Not for a second did Kakashi believe there had been such a choice. His jaw clenched for a moment, realising that there was only so much fault he could find in Sakura. "She's too young," he said quietly, a little desperately.

"Subject two was the same age, if not a little younger," Danzou pointed out with an upraised palm. "But perhaps you have more _personal_ reasons to exclude her from the program."

"My personal feelings are of no consequence," Kakashi replied swiftly. "I will do whatever my Hokage asks or requires of me."

"Good. You may meet with her this morning. She may need some, ah, orientation," Danzou said, apparently deaf to the chuckles of his cronies over what such an orientation might entail. "She may also be considered a flight risk, so I am relying on you to ensure she doesn't do anything stupid, and for the course of this mission I am assigning Ari and Jin as escorts to help the mission objective to completion."

Kakashi bowed. "Yes, Hokage-sama."

"You may leave."

He backed out of the room, as it was forbidden to turn ones back on the Hokage (presumably because he would stab it), and proceeded sedately down the stairs till he was once again standing in daylight on the street outside. He blinked up at the pale blue sky and the clouds of starlings flitting over the rooftops, and saw all the other people walking the pavements as if it was just another day. Not one of them had just been commanded to approach their young student and inform her that it was her duty to not only spread her legs for the village but to give the village a child.

And by Suda Hiroshi no less.

Kakashi began to move. He was not heading off to find Sakura just yet; he had an appointment with that shady alley across the street first. Passing down the narrow gap between two office buildings, he didn't stop until he'd turned down another passage and was completely out of sight of the administration building and all the ANBU Root agents that swarmed around it. There he stopped and leant against the rough brick wall beside a rusty fire-escape. Litter lined the alley, piled high in every corner and nook like leaves in autumn. The dumpster nearby was near overflowing.

For a long time he just reclined against the wall, weighing the black scroll in his hand, occasionally flipping it idly. Then suddenly he could no longer stifle himself, and with a violent grunt he threw the scroll against the opposite wall of the alley.

It ricocheted off with a resounding crack and skidded away across the concrete, straight into a pile of litter. Kakashi stormed over to pick it up, fully ready to snap it in half and keep tearing and tearing at that paper until he felt right again.

A crunch inside the dumpster made him turn sharply, reaching for the concealed tanto in his sleeve, angry that he wasn't as alone as he'd wished to be. All he saw was the rapidly moving blur of a child running away down the alley away from him.

He stared after it, astonished. Had that child been in the dumpster all along? Had it been there all night?

He shouldn't have been surprised. In a village like this there were few people with living parents, and some became orphans sooner than others. It was such a fundamental truth of their society that there had always been a social service ready to take in all waifs and strays and find them shelter one way or another. There had never been any kids left on the _street..._

At least not until Danzou had decided to divert the funding for social services to the military budget. There were now more ANBU than ever. And now there were more homeless children too. It wasn't an act of senseless cruelty – desperate children were just the right recruiting pool for Danzou's Root army, and taking kids straight off the street and training them to become ANBU ensured a kind of loyalty that would be hard to break in years to come. The Hokage had it all planned out, and these ruthless endeavours to strengthen Konoha's forces and ensure its future was how he'd secured the full support of the council, the daimyou, and most of the civilians of Konoha who'd been left shaken by the decline of the village's power and prosperity after the repeated invasions. He'd had this planned out for years. The path to absolute control had been paved long before anyone could have suspected enough to stop his influence.

Suddenly deflated of all his anger, Kakashi turned back and picked up the black scroll to slip into his pouch.

Everyone's life was harder these days. That was the nature of things. There were good times and there were bad times, but nothing lasted forever. While Danzou held so much support, it was impossible to oppose him openly, and Kakashi had to hold it together for now and withhold any display of weakness before his superiors.

And so, for now, he straightened his gloves and ran a finger over the hem of his mask to ensure it was secure, and set off for Sakura's apartment.

She lived in the innermost zone of the village, where the apartments were smaller, tightly compacted, and cheap to boot. He too had lived in the same sort of accommodation until a few years ago when his home had been one of many buildings levelled in the rain country's attack, and he'd used the opportunity to trade up, choosing one of the bigger, more aesthetic residences towards the edge of town. He knew which building complex she lived in, as he'd always liked to keep a vague eye on the personal details of his subordinates, even though she had moved there after she'd been reassigned permanently to the hospital. Because she'd never stopped being _his_ team medic.

But while he knew her building number, her apartment number escaped him. He knocked on the first door he came to and asked which door belonged to Sakura, and wasn't surprised that the young man who answered didn't even know there was any Sakura who lived in the same building. She must have spent so much time working that few of her neighbours saw her.

He struck better luck with the middle-aged woman who answered his knocks at the second door. She pointed up the stairs and said the pink-haired girl always carried her groceries up to the third floor. On that third floor he found another woman who pointed to door B3 wordlessly the moment he said her name.

So that was the door he stood before now, palms tingling as he tried to summon the courage to knock. He didn't want to be here. He would rather have been anywhere else right then, than standing in front of Sakura's apartment, wondering exactly how he was going to explain himself to her. He _shouldn't_ have even been given this assignment. There were others involved in the program who could have overseen Sakura's case, but none of them knew her as personally as he did.

And that was what Danzou wanted; he wanted to see Tsunade's supporters debased and humiliated in the worst possible way. He wanted Sakura to know true violation, and he wanted Kakashi to not only witness it, but organise it.

If he couldn't find an excuse to throw his political enemies in prison, this was how he dealt with them.

Kakashi lifted his fist and knocked three times. There was no reply, so after a few seconds he knocked again.

He knew she was in there – he could definitely sense a living body on the other side of this door – but he understood that right now she probably didn't want visitors. He wouldn't want them either, if he was in her shoes.

No... he couldn't presume to know what it was like to be in her place right now.

"Sakura?" he called softly and waited. He hoped she would respond if she knew it was him at least.

The door cracked open a few inches and Sakura's pale smiling face appeared. "Kakashi-sensei?"

He might have been fooled, if she hadn't looked ready to slam the door in his face at any given moment. It made him feel incredibly untrustworthy when even his own student refused to open the door fully to him, and he knew this wasn't going to be an easy encounter. "I saw you last night," he began. "You looked a little upset, so I thought..."

Now she just looked even more strained. "I'm ok," she said, though her eyes screamed something else at him. Something desperate and pleading.

"Can I come in at least?" he asked. What he had to say couldn't be said on her doorstep.

For the briefest second she looked alarmed and darted a glance over his shoulder at her apartment, probably assessing if it was in a state fit for visitors. Whatever her conclusion was, she turned back to him grudging and grunted her unenthusiastic consent before stepping back and opening the door wider.

Her apartment was _tiny._ He hadn't quite expected anything this small, because he'd considered his last apartment to be pretty damn small but this was at least half the size. The bed took up most of it against the opposite wall, as did a low-slung coffee table next to it. Fresh clothes hung on a rail beside the door and wet ones were hung on a line outside her window. For how compact the room was, she seemed to have everything she needed... on her coffee table she had a few books and a beauty kit, and on a shelf over her bed she kept a single toothbrush in a cup.

He supposed that for someone who virtually lived at the hospital, this was merely a secondary residence where she slept only as a formality.

She sat down on her bed, hands clasped between her knees, and since there wasn't anywhere else to sit, Kakashi joined her, trying not to bump any part of himself against her.

"It's not exactly fit for entertaining," she apologised, looking away from him at the floor that was covered in a number of crumbs and socks. Kakashi spied a pair of panties hanging on her radiator and quickly looked away to examine her coffee table instead. "It's nice," he said. "I've never seen your apartment."

"I'm surprised you know where I live."

"Ah, someone told me," he said with a shrug. He would have explained that he'd looked her up months ago, yet he didn't seem to have the energy to launch any long-winded explanations of his nosy nature. "It's been a while."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I've been so busy at the hospital lately..."

"You enjoying it much?"

"I suppose."

She didn't sound even remotely keen on her work anymore. First and foremost, he supposed she had always intended to be a kunoichi, and medicine had been her second complimentary skill to further her career as that kunoichi. But with one sweeping legislation, she'd been forced into full time and very demanding healthcare, and only male medics were able to continue working in the field.

He wondered if this had been Danzou's final kick against Tsunade's coffin, to relegate all female medics to the hospital as if they were no more than nurses. But perhaps his grudge was against all woman-kind, to have also created the likes of the Women's Division. Did he truly doubt their ability? Or was it just that his preoccupation with appearances made him think the village put up a stronger front to other powers to revert back to reassert the old gender roles?

"I hear the W.D. is putting its case to the council again," Kakashi said. "Perhaps there's still room for Danzou to be persuaded to allow kunoichi full access to missions again. It would be nice. It's not really been the same since you left the team..."

He meant it, but Sakura appeared even more disheartened. "Yeah," she said, her voice growing weaker. "It would be nice to be a team again."

He'd scanned every surface in this room covertly with one hooded eye, but there was no sign of the red scroll he'd seen her carrying the previous night. It had to be in this apartment, even if all that was left of it were some burnt remains (if Sakura had done to her scroll what Kakashi had nearly done to his).

Finally he asked. "Where is it?"

She went still beside him. "Where's what?"

"The scroll. The one you were carrying last night."

"I wasn't carrying a scroll last night, sensei," she said stiffly.

"It was red." He put his hand on the mattress they were sitting on. "I suppose it's under here, isn't it?"

Her resolve of indifference broke. "Please, sensei, you have to forget you ever saw it," she whispered, eyes wide and face even paler than before. "If Danzou finds out..."

"It's not really me I'm worried about," Kakashi said softly, beginning to remove the black scroll from his pouch. "I'm glad you took his warning seriously, Sakura. One of the other women didn't... and that didn't end well for her husband, I'm sorry to say."

"One of the other women?"

"The mother of subject three," he said, spreading the scroll wide on the table. He remembered that woman better than all the rest. He'd been the one who had to hold her still as she'd cried and tried to beat him senseless while Root ANBU quietly removed her husband's body from the house. Heart attack, they said. Though everyone in the program including his wife knew it had been cyanide.

Sakura looked in dim confusion between him and the scroll on the table. She connected the dots slowly and unwillingly, until she could no longer deny the truth staring her in the face.

"You're my handler," she said bleakly.

And all Kakashi could say was, "I'm sorry."

Her eyelids flickered shut and for a long time she just sat there, hands clasped so tightly between her knees that they had long since turned white. He waited, knowing that if he said anything to her now it would be too soon, and after almost a full minute she finally drew in a long shaky breath as if it was the first she'd taken since she'd last spoken. "Please leave," she said quietly.

He didn't move. Although she sounded remarkably calm, somehow he knew that leaving her alone right now was the last thing she needed. "We should talk," he said, and like her he could only look at the scroll on the table. They couldn't meet each other's eyes.

"Ok," she said. "Let's talk. So when did you become Danzou's _lackey_? You certainly kept this quiet, but I'm sure Naruto will be proud of you when he finds out."

He winced. "You know I wouldn't be involved in this project if I'd had a choice, Sakura. I doubt you volunteered either, right?"

Her shoulders sagged a little, some of her half-formed anger easing away before it had even taken off. "I'm sorry. Of course... did he threaten to have you killed too?"

Vaguely, as he recalled. But Kakashi had been more concerned about the veiled threats to his teammates and friends that Danzou had made when he'd approached Kakashi for initiation. He distinctly recalled the Hokage nonchalantly commenting that with Kakashi helping to head the project, certain female acquaintances of his would be less likely to be involved. Danzou had broken his end of the deal, but that was almost a given, and if he tried to pull out now by claiming Danzou had violated the conditions of his cooperation, Danzou would merely deny this had ever been a condition at all... before executing the rest of the threats he still held above Kakashi's head. His life would be forfeit, and Sakura's well-being would be in the hands of far less pleasant agents.

"Danzou's threats mean little to me. I only obey because there's nothing to be gained and a hell of a lot to lose by throwing myself on the martyr's sword at this point, and at least I can hope to do a little good where I am now. Like with you."

"With me?" she repeated softly.

"I can help you escape Konoha," he said. "If that's what you want."

She was momentarily speechless, and slowly drew her gaze up to him. "Do you offer that to all the women you... approach?"

"Only the ones who I think stand a chance of evading the hunter-nin," he said darkly.

"And how many accepted?" she wanted to know.

He sighed. "None. I haven't offered it to anyone else," he said. "To be honest, leaving the village is suicide. The only missing-nin to have survived are Orochimaru, Sasuke, and Naruto."

"Do you think I'm up to their level?" she asked, wearing a thin smile.

His shoulders lifted in a tiny, almost imperceptible shrug. "It's up to you."

"Ah." Her eyelashes fluttered low to regard the scroll again. "So that's a 'no', and my choice is to obey or commit suicide?" she murmured softly, defeated. "It doesn't seem like much of a choice."

Kakashi was tempted to agree. If she refused, she would lay herself open to accusations of treason and insubordination, and contradicting the Hokage was just about the most dangerous thing you could do in this village. She could run-away, but with the ANBU tracker division more bulked up and better armed and trained and paid than he'd ever seen it before, her odds of survival outside the village were slim. "Maybe," he said, "if we could get in contact with Naruto… you could join him-"

"That could take months," she cut him off with a shake of the head. "If a whole division of ANBU can't trace him, what can we do?"

There was a very good reason why Naruto was keeping his head down; when there was a bounty on your head of a few million ryo, one tended to disappear off the map. He had been too much of a threat to Danzou – in both strength and popularity – and the old bastard had worked hard to muddy his name and reputation until he'd convinced enough people to support an arrest warrant. He was too close to the known criminal, Sasuke, he said. His mere existence had wrought untold disaster upon Konoha.

One day when Danzou's strangle-hold on the council and the daimyou was broken, and he made one misstep cruel enough to no longer be overlooked by the people, Naruto could return. Except no one knew when that day would be, and the more time that passed, and the more loyalty and power Danzou garnered with the new militarised ANBU, the hope to displace him grew slimmer and slimmer. At this point, even if Naruto returned and forced Danzou out, he'd never have the support of the ANBU, and the village would descend into a chaotic power struggle.

And until then, Naruto needed to remain hidden. There had to be thirty tracker nin out there looking for him, and forcing him to surface in order to take Sakura in would be dangerous, even if Kakashi knew how to contact him.

So what was left?

"Aren't you going to fill me in on the mission?" Sakura asked eventually, stooped beside him as if something heavy was crouched on her shoulders.

"Sakura," he began, "You don't have to-"

"I'll make my decision. In the mean time just do your job," she said, a little shortly. "Brief me."

He looked away, disorientated. He'd only glanced over the scroll in Danzou's office, just enough to take in Sakura's name and the name of her 'target', but now he forced himself to pick up the scroll and read it. Though he could have just handed the scroll to Sakura and let her digest the information, he felt the need to almost censor it for her. The wording was too cold. Too unsympathetic.

"They want you to find Suda Hiroshi in Otafuku Gai," he said, running the pads of his fingers lightly over the lines of text on the scroll. "He goes there at least once a week, usually during weekends, to blow off some steam with prostitutes. He spends a lot of money with the higher class establishments and he's been known to take mistresses before... so... that's probably your most likely angle. No point hiding you're a kunoichi either. He'd know the moment he met you."

"Why him? Why Suda?" she asked, looking a little queasily at his picture. Suda Hiroshi was not what Kakashi would call grotesque, or even particularly plain, but even he couldn't deny there was something unpleasantly pointed and oily about that that thin face and those heavy-lidded eyes.

"He has a sonic bloodline limit and all five of his children have manifested it. About twenty years ago he used it in a battle between the wave village and the cloud village during the third secret war, causing an avalanche. He's… more or less the reason why there isn't a wave village anymore," Kakashi explained.

She gave him a sideways look. "How dangerous is he?"

"Quite," he admitted with a helpless shrug. "His abilities are very broad and can be used long-range and short-range. Like I said he can cause avalanches, but in close combat he could destroy internal organs."

"How?" she asked stonily. Perhaps by fixating on the details she hoped to momentarily overlook the bigger picture.

"His bloodline limit is producing sound waves, and everything oscillates to a certain frequency, including flesh, blood and organs. If it exists, he can destroy it just by opening his mouth. He's not been known to use it indiscriminately, but it would be a case where you wouldn't know if he was attacking you until it was too late."

Sakura's eyebrow twitched up slightly. "I can see how Danzou would consider that a very desirable trait."

Kakashi shrugged. Was it really so worth it?

"As your handler I'd deal with arranging the meeting, the accommodation, and any other details. Two root members are going to be assigned to escort us, officially for your protection, but more realistically so Danzou can keep an eye on us, to make sure you're completing the mission and I'm not covering for you."

"Well, I suppose there goes _that _option of the window," she muttered.

He could tell he wasn't exactly selling her on the idea of this mission. Wouldn't Danzou be so disappointed? "It's up to you," he said at last. "If you want to take your chances going against Danzou, I'll support you as best I can. I wouldn't blame you. A mission like this is asking too much."

"Is it?" she wondered a little bleakly. "They ask us to lay down our lives for the village every day. I've gone on missions for Tsunade that almost killed me, and I never thought twice about it. Is asking someone to give life instead of take it really that bad?"

Kakashi remembered the other four women he'd been told to recruit. They'd all taken the news in different ways. The first woman had taken it stoically, as if it was any other assignment. The second woman had been younger than even Sakura, just a girl really, and the orders had devastated her, demanding she resign a huge part of her life over before it had even begun. The third subject had been a disaster. Already a mother with a young family, against Kakashi's warnings she'd told her husband and unwisely he'd confronted Kakashi publicly to get his wife removed from the program. Now she was a widow and a single mother to three children, and she'd confessed to him more than once that she wished he had just asked her to die for the village instead. This was in contrast to subject four who had taken the orders with a flippant shrug, succeeded with her chosen target in less than a month, and was planning to give the child up to the care of Danzou's underlings so it could be fed and raised on his brand of indoctrination while she got on with her life.

Though some women did their duty without any sign they even cared, he doubted it was easy for any of them. This wasn't the same as being asked to fight for the village. This wasn't the mission any of them had signed up for when they'd become certified shinobi. Ultimately, it all came down to choice.

"It's bad," he said slowly. "Danzou's done this to over a dozen women regardless of their will, forcing them to choose between this and death. It amounts to nothing more than rape."

She stared dismally into nothing. "So what do I choose?"

He shook his head faintly. "It's not for me to tell you what to do. All I can promise is that if you choose to run, I'll be waiting in the park tonight near the jungle gym from midnight. If you choose to go ahead with the mission, I'll be waiting with the escorts in two days by the village gates, midday."

Sakura raised her fist to her mouth, chewing on her thumbnail. She wouldn't answer him now, but he hadn't expected her to, and although he didn't want to leave her, he knew that she wouldn't be able to sort this out in her head until he was gone and she no longer had to concentrate on entertaining a façade for him. It was the same with the other women. He was not there to help… he was only Danzou's instrument, and each of them knew that, even Sakura.

"Think about it," he said, quietly getting to his feet and stepping around the coffee table to reach for the door. When he looked back at her, their eyes met briefly before she quickly looked away. He was right; she wanted him out of there and she wouldn't relax until then.

He shut the door quietly after him and moved to lean on the balustrade and look down at the street below. He didn't know what he was waiting for. For Sakura to start crying? To throw things at the door behind him? To come tearing out after him, begging for help? That wasn't who she was. Even if she was the kind of person to run for help, it would be deluded to think he was the one she would have chosen to confide in. They weren't close. He wouldn't force that closeness.

With nothing else he could do, he went straight home to start packing his bags and making preparations to leave. The park was a quiet, ominous place at night, and that was where Kakashi waited for Sakura to make her choice.

* * *

Sai was faced with a conundrum.

When Kakashi had left the apartment, Sai decided to abandon his charge of monitoring Sakura's tiny abode and follow him to wherever it was he was going in such an uncharacteristically direct fashion. Icha Icha was nowhere to be seen. It could only mean that Kakashi was preoccupied with something urgent or important, which in turn meant Sai should probably find out what that was. It was no doubt connected to Sakura herself.

The first thing the jonin did was return to his own house, where from his vantage point on the roof of a neighbouring terrace Sai saw him packing a travel bag. This made sense. Although Sai had not been privy to the details, he knew Kakashi was leaving indefinitely on a mission in a couple of days, along with Sakura. It was only natural the man would pack… and yet Sai knew something was up in a way that only someone who had spent long, disturbing hours studying this man's body language could detect.

Perhaps it was the way he was packing that tipped him of – like he was annoyed at every single object and article of clothing he threw in the bag. Or perhaps it was what he was packing – like everything from a hidden hole in the wall behind his bookcase. A little suspicious. To Sai's knowledge, people didn't usually keep all their most commonly used mission equipment in a secret cache.

But Kakashi didn't pack long. He soon left the house with Sai following at a safe distance and stopped at a residence Sai was not familiar with. It all became clear, however, when Kakashi knocked on the door and a tall blonde woman emerged.

She was a jonin from the W.D. – specifically, she was the jonin he had observed was courting Kakashi.

If he tried to sneak any closer he knew he would be detected, so Sai was forced to remain at a distance, far out of ear-shot and only able to judge the conversation by the expressions that crossed the woman's face. Eyebrows tilted up, eyes slightly narrowed, and lips parted. Attraction, mixed in with concern? Disbelief? Suspicion? Whatever it was, it was unlike their previously flirtatious interactions. Was Kakashi saying good bye? Breaking off the courtship?

After a while, all that could be said appeared to have been said, and Kakashi lightly embraced the woman before turning away from her. Neither looked happy.

It was all very intriguing. This would definitely go in his diary later.

From this house, Kakashi headed into town and approached a few people. Like the conversation with his lady-friend, these seemed like unusually short and serious interactions, and Sai noted that each and every one was from Danzou's watchlist – his highly confidential list of people known or suspected to be supporters of the previous Hokage or Naruto, the missing Jinchuuriki; Maito Gai, Nara Shikamaru, Kamizuki Izumo, Hagane Kotetsu, Kurenai Yuhi. What was he asking to make each and every one of them shake their heads and shrug like that? Did he want something? Was he looking for someone? Looking for help?

The Hokage would no doubt be very interested in hearing this, though Sai's vigil did not end there. He kept tabs on Kakashi as he returned home once more that evening, and stayed on as night set in. And just as he was about to finish up and go home himself, he detected more activity in the house. Kakashi was on the move again, and at quarter to midnight, he left the house and set off down the street with – as Sai had witnessed – a scroll in his pouch within which was sealed enough equipment and supplies to last a trek across one or two continents.

What exactly was this man up to?

His destination appeared to be the park. Sai kept to the shadows beneath the trees, silently circling the plateau where a children's climbing frame glinted in the moonlight. This was where Kakashi stopped and sat down on the bench furthest away from the glaring streetlights. He sat so still that had Sai not known he was there, he would not have noticed him.

What now?

"Why don't you come out, Sai? Anyone would think you were up to no good, skulking around in the shadows like that."

Sai stiffened a little, though he wasn't so surprised. Danzou kept Kakashi around for a reason, and if it wasn't for his stellar loyalty, it was because he was still one of the most formidable jonin in the village. He pushed away from his tree and stepped into moonlight, gravel crunching under foot as he gave up all efforts to disguise his presence. "I could say the same for you, Kakashi-sensei," he said.

"There's nothing suspicious about a man going for a midnight stroll," Kakashi replied evenly. "You're the one who's been stalking me all day, however. What is this? Some intensive new study of human behaviour you're conducting?"

Sai smiled blankly.

"Or perhaps Danzou is really the one interested in my behaviour?"

"That might be an accurate assumption," said Sai, who could neither confirm or deny any such thing unless he wanted the binding curse on his tongue to seize and choke him. "Would you like to hear my observations?"

Kakashi's hand emerged from the shadow, making a lazy gesture for Sai to do whatever he liked.

"You spoke to several suspicious persons today whom are known to be sympathisers of the exiled Jinchuuriki, appearing to seek aid from them, but it seems that was to no avail. You also spoke with the female jonin from the W.D. who showed three of the five signs of separation anxiety, leading me to think you have told her you will be going away for a long time. Now you are here in the park in the middle of the night, in what might appear to be an unscheduled rendezvous point, fully equipped as if you anticipate a long expedition beginning shortly, though you aren't scheduled to leave the village for two more days. All this began after you left Sakura-san's apartment earlier today."

"What a curious take on things," Kakashi murmured, still utterly relaxed upon his bench. "And what do you suppose I'm up to?"

"Someone witnessing this might assume you plan to leave the village tonight before your mission tomorrow, despite having no clearance. Possibly with Sakura-san herself."

With a rustle of clothing and a deep sigh, Kakashi stood up. "I see," he said, moving into the moonlight until he was no so far away from Sai. "And what do you plan to report to Danzou?"

Sai thought for a moment. "I will most likely tell him the truth: that I witnessed you preparing for a mission today. Since you are cleared to leave on one soon, it would be natural to assume this is normal."

"Of course," Kakashi said, nodding vaguely as he turned to regard the moon.

"But if you disappear tonight, I may be forced to give more… detail," Sai said. "Do you plan on disappearing?"

"What time is it, Sai?"

"It's fifteen minutes past midnight, Sensei."

"She's never late…"

"Excuse me?"

Kakashi turned back to him. "I'm not going anywhere tonight," the man said heavily. "Perhaps you were reading too much into what you saw today?"

"Yes," Sai agreed, though he eyes began to narrow. "May I ask a question, Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi made the same gesture with his hand. _Do as you like_, it said.

"What is this mission that you'll be accompanying Sakura on?" Sai asked. He had never in his life seen a mission upset Sakura as much as this one had, nor had there been one yet that had caused him to observe Kakashi making genuine preparations to abandon the village.

Slowly Kakashi turned to him, regarding him silently for a moment. The light of the moon hit the covered side of his face strongly, casting a shadow just as strong on the other, rendering him wholly unreadable. Then he reached up and grasped the edge of his mask to drag it down to his neck. He opened his mouth and presented his tongue, and even in this poor light Sai saw the familiar black bars running across its surface.

"I'm afraid Danzou got me a long time ago," Kakashi said, replacing his mask. "I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to, not unless you already know the truth."

Sai, stunned, just stared at him. Only the original circle of Root were muted by Danzou's binding seal. Those who had been recruited after Danzou's ascension to power had been spared such a measure, and someone like Kakashi, who had never joined in any capacity, was the last person Sai expected to see branded.

"What could be so bad that you'd want to abandon the village?" Sai wondered quietly.

Kakashi rubbed his jaw, like his own mouth was a traitor to him. "You have to wonder."

"Is it really so bad here?" Sai asked. He understood why some people remained so resistant to Danzou. Not everyone appreciated the creation of the W.D., or how much power the Hokage allowed his top advisors to misuse, but no one could accuse Danzou of not caring about Hokage, or of not doing everything in his power to make it a stronger, safer place. Even if some people didn't like Root ANBU like him patrolling the streets, it was ultimately for their own good.

But Kakashi had no answers. Instead of replying, he merely shrugged. "You should go home," he said, "or make your report to the Hokage if you like."

"That can wait, I think," said Sai. "What will you do now? Are you going home too?"

After a hesitant pause, Kakashi moved back to the bench. "I think I'll wait here a little while longer."

Perturbed, Sai forgot to smile as he stepped back. "I'll see you tomorrow then, Sensei."

Kakashi made a neutral sound. "Maybe."

* * *

Sakura had packed her bags that night, but she never got as far as leaving the flat. Freedom, as she rationalised, meant death. There were no two ways about it. Missing-nin had extremely short lives, and to spend what was left of it on the run, stressed and afraid that every day might be her last – was that really worth it?

If she stayed… if she completed this mission, she would live, but for the rest of her life she would be tied to a child. She'd never thought about children. It was too early in her own life to be entertaining such thoughts, and she had no expectations or dreams that this missionwouldderail, nor did she have a man in her life that would be alienated by it. But what did that mean for her future, to have a child that belonged more to the village than it did to her?

Perhaps there would be loopholes? Perhaps there were ways out of this that would make themselves known once she better understand the exact dynamics of her mission? As disturbing as it was to no longer know what her future held anymore, surely it was better than the fatal certainty of becoming a missing-nin.

After two days she finally gathered together the bags she'd packed and headed off to the village gates, still not quite believing what she'd been told she was really walking into. Surely there were so many things left undone? She felt like a sneak and a liar, walking away from the village into this life-changing mission without a word of warning to her friends. Or even her own mother. Good lord, what was she going to tell her _mother_?

But this was the concern of her handler only from now on. She only wished that hadn't been Kakashi.

She trusted him, of course she did, and perhaps that was the problem. Of all the people she didn't want to be party to this farce of a mission, it was the people she knew and trusted. But if it _was_ going to be someone like that, she still wished it had been someone else. For Kakashi's face when she arrived at the gate was schooled and hard, and while that was probably wise given that two Root ANBU were standing beside him, it might have been nice if he'd given a smile, no matter how small, to reassure her.

Had he been waiting in the park for her two nights ago? Did he think she had made the right choice? Sakura wasn't sure herself.

"You ready?" he called to her.

No. She looked at the two ANBU standing beside him, and neither looked particularly friendly right then. They were measuring her up where she stood, and whatever conclusion the one on the left came to made him smile, unpleasantly. Did she dare admit reservations or weakness in front of them, knowing they were answering directly to Danzou?

She took a step forward but a cry from behind her made her pause.

"Wait!"

Sakura, turned, heart in her throat, knowing that this was her rescue call. There had been some terrible mistake – the mission wasn't intended for her – and this was the messenger who had been sent to relieve her.

But the woman, a tall blonde, was jogging straight towards Kakashi. Sakura recognised her faintly as one of the new jonin in the W.D., and the moment she realised that the woman was only interested in her sensei, her heart froze over again and she half turned away, already irrationally angry with the woman for giving her hope.

The blonde spoke softly to Kakashi so no one else would hear, shyly and bashfully, making it perfectly obvious that this was no official message. The two ANBU root nudged each other with poorly hidden smirks. Then the woman gave something to Kakashi and waved as he turned away.

"What was that about?" Sakura asked as he moved past her.

"Nothing," he answered evenly, and Sakura's mind, so wrapped up in her own problems, thought no more of it. "Are you ready?" he repeated, as if he needed to be sure.

Sakura sighed. "I'm ready," she lied.

And so they set off.

* * *

TBC


	3. In the Cold I'm Standing

**Scarlet Scroll**

In the Cold I'm Standing

* * *

It was raining that night, but it hadn't dampened the mood on the streets. Through the open window, Kakashi looked down at the dripping lights and lanterns and watched the gaudily dressed women grouping themselves beneath colourful parasols, laughing and beckoning to the men who passed by. A soft orange glow spilled out of the brothel opposite, its windows and doors lit up like a pumpkin - plenty of customers were gathering close, attracted by the warmth of the light and the pleasure the women promised.

It wasn't the only brothel in Otafuku Gai. A few hundred yards up the street there was another. And another after that. In fact, this town was nothing more than a series of brothels connected by an endless chain of pubs, gambling halls, and cheap love hotels. It was the centre of nightlife and adult entertainment for all the five nations, and every night on every street there was always a party. Music was everywhere. From the brothel sang a light airy song of seduction, and in the bar two buildings away he heard the dull thud of a repetitive bassline. It would play all through the night until morning, as it always did, but then no one ever came to Otafuku Gai to _sleep_.

"Oh, there he goes."

Kakashi resisted glancing over to the other side of the room where two men sat beside a second open window. Out of this window pointed a bulky black camera, the film of which had been used up days ago, and was now only good to zoom in and spy through the windows of other hotels. Both men had their eyes glued to its eyepiece, swapping it between them with guffaws.

"You've got to see this, Sempai, he's really going for it now," one of them said, chuckling dirtily.

Kakashi feigned a yawn and propped his chin on his palm. Instead of accepting the invitation to look through the camera, he kept his eyes roving the street below, barely taking anything in. A man was throwing up in an alley some distance away, and a little nearer, another man was being pushed out of a doorway, presumably because he was out of money. Just little disharmonious nuances in a scene full of merriment and lasciviousness. Movement in a window directly facing his own made him glance across. A woman was peering out of an upstairs room in the brothel to look at the rain. She saw Kakashi too and smiled. Leaning forward to show her ample cleavage, she crooked a finger at him, silently inviting him to come over, get to know her and her price.

He stared through her, touching the charm hung around his neck before resolutely reaching out to slide the wooden shutter of the window back into place. His view of the prostitute and the street blocked, his gaze had nowhere to wander but around this dingy little hotel room that smelled of old tea and mould. Rather than risk glancing over at the men and the monitor they were panting at, he settled for closing his eyes and trying to think of home.

"Go on, spank that little slut."

"Look at her face, she's loving this."

A deep laugh. "Ouch, that had to hurt. I wish we had more film for this thing."

"Zoom in, zoom in. I want to see those little titties bounce."

Kakashi lifted his head away from the wall. "Jin, Ari," his acerbic tone cut right through the perverted whisperings and sniggers of the two men, "she's your teammate."

They just looked at him, clearly wondering how this was relevant to anything. "Our _teammate_ finished hours ago," Jin said. "There is, however, a nice looking blonde three floors below her who seems to like the reverse cowgirl."

"If Sakura finished, why isn't she back yet?" Kakashi stood and stalked across the room to snatch the camera off its tripod, regardless of the two Root nin's protests. He snapped the lens into focus on the window of their target's room. All was dark.

"Who knows? They're lovers. Lovers sleep together." Ari pointed out the window. "Can you see the blonde yet?"

Kakashi all but threw the camera into Ari's lap, retreating back to his side of the room. It wouldn't be the first time Sakura had spent the whole night with their target, but it always made him nervous. The less time she spent in the company of one of the fiercest fights in the lightning country was another year rescued from being shaved off Kakashi's life expectancy with worry.

Jin turned to Ari with a roll of the eyes. "He's just being a killjoy because he 's been in Otafuku Gai for three weeks and he still hasn't been able to get any."

What was the point even engaging with these men? He might as well have been talking to gorillas. Kakashi sighed and let his head drop back against the wall. Let them keep surreptitiously squeezing themselves through their pants together. If their teammate found out...? Well, what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. She needed to believe that she could at least trust her teammates to be professional when keeping surveillance for her safety, and even though it wasn't true, Kakashi didn't think she needed to be enlightened and humiliated.

A quiet knock rapped on the door.

At once Kakashi stiffened, hand automatically moving to cover the half-length sword on the floor beside him. He didn't relax even after a soft feminine voice called, "Did someone order a nightcap?"

He switched his sharp glare to Jin and Ari, who were not nearly as concerned about their caller. "You ordered a nightcap?" he hissed quietly.

"Chill out, it's just a drink," Jin said blithely.

"We're on an undercover operation," he ground out, looking pointedly at the camera equipment strewn around the window. "If we're discovered, we'll be provoking another war with countless nations."

"It's just a drink," Jin snorted again as Ari called back towards the door, "Come in!"

A slim fair-haired woman on her knees pushed open the door and slid a tray inside across the floor, in the gratingly submissive manner that was so popular in a town built to accommodate male desire. She stood and entered and knelt once more to close the door before bringing the drink tray over to the two beckoning men. She noticed the recording equipment immediately. She would have been blind not to.

"What are you three up to?" she said with coy suspicion. "You're not _voyeurs_, are you?"

"Artists," said Jin.

"Photographers," said Ari.

"Would you like to be in our next model?" asked Jin.

The woman giggled and flapped a hand at him. "Oh, you," she said. Kakashi suspected she probably got hit on a lot and she had a large repertoire of overused brush-off lines.

"How about a little goodnight kiss to go with these drinks," Jin asked, pulling the woman down into his lap with a tug on her arm. She fell with a cry of surprise and Kakashi tensed again, fingers curling around the wooden sheath of his sword, until the woman laughed and wriggled playfully.

"You'll have to pay extra for _that_, boys," the hostess said with a forced laugh.

"That'll be all," Kakashi said curtly. They had a job to do. The lacking professionalism of his colleagues could wait until their current task was finished.

"Killjoy," Ari grunted.

"Who's that?" the hostess asked.

"The lighting director," Jin told her, hands wandering liberally over her thighs. "Arty types are very temperamental. Don't mind him."

"Huh." She extricated herself from his lap and stood, bowing to them all. "Thank you for your custom, gentleman. I'll wish you goodnight now."

As the woman made her way to the door with the empty tray, Ari and Jin shot half-hearted glares at Kakashi as if this was his fault. Which it was, of course. But just as she was about the close the door after her, Kakashi jumped to his feet and crossed the room to stop her.

She spied the heavy gold coins he was holding out to her. Immediately her demeanour turned coy and beguiling again. "Changed your mind?" she purred.

Kakashi handed her the money. "Don't tell anyone about us... photographers. Not your friends, not your boss. No one."

She accepted the money. "Anything else?" she asked with false meekness. She clearly expected him to ask for just one more thing from her.

Kakashi stepped back into the room and closed the door in her face. Over by the window, Jin and Ari knocked their cups of sake together in a wordless toast. "That was stupid," he said harshly. "If she talks-"

"Eh, we'll just kill her later before she has a chance," Jin muttered with a shrug, eyes back on the television screen. "It's not a big deal."

"No killing," Kakashi sighed. "That'll be even more suspicious. But if this mission goes to hell, you can be sure I'll be telling Danzou _exactly_ who is responsible."

"You think he'd believe you, the disgraced Copycat, over us, two captains of Root?" Ari raised an eyebrow at him. "If this mission gets cocked up, do you really think he'll believe you had nothing to do with it? You're the only one here with an interest in sabotage."

Kakashi looked at him coolly. He could detect the threat there. On a whim, these two could ruin the mission and set world war four into motion, just to get _him_ into trouble. They'd love that. _Danzou_ would love that.

Jin grabbed Ari's arm, eyes glued to the camera, "Here it comes, he's finishing – is he – I don't believe it, they've fallen off the bed!"

"Let me see!"

The two men burst out laughing as Kakashi turned away, jaw clenched. "Are you done?" Kakashi asked coldly.

"Yeah, whatever," the Root captain, drained the last of his sake and stood. The arousal tenting his pants was about as obvious as it was predictable. "I'm off for some fun… coming Jin?"

"Sure."

"You can keep up the surveillance," Ari said. "And then you can go pick her up since you love her so much."

The two slipped out of the room, leaving Kakashi to stare resentfully at the camera still pointing out into the night.

* * *

'Seduction' was not a word that could fully convey the act. Like most people, Sakura took her knowledge of the old X-class missions from the heavily romanticised books and movies on the subject. There, seduction meant long, lingering looks, shorts skirts, plunging cleavage, hot whispered words in ears, lipstick, sexy music, and worldly confidence. It meant smoky, dimly lit bars or perhaps even sleazy hotels. It was not something she thought she could do with any convincing flair.

But all it had taken was a single look.

A little bit of light was trickling in between the crack in the sliding door. Sakura lay in the darkness, watching the tiny, weightless specks of dust drift in and out of sight, occasionally interrupted by a lumbering shadow that passed down the corridor outside cast by some slow, slurring patron or a quiet, neat staff member.

Sakura dragged her gaze reluctantly back to the large, wheezing form beside her. He didn't look as young as his profile picture had suggested. A little balder, a little leaner. These nights when he fell asleep straight after and forgot to send her away were the worst. She was stuck here, listening to his annoying whistling breaths and inhaling his sharp, unpleasant odour, unable to leave lest he reprimand her the next time he saw her, and unable to sleep herself until he was gone. Sometimes she marvelled at how easy it might be to reach over and crush his throat, ending everything. Those were the times when she gave herself a shake and warned that this man was an innocent pawn in this. It was she, after all, who had targeted him. It was she who had agreed to become his mistress, and it had been far too easy.

She'd met him in the onsen. Mixed bathing was a tradition that hung on tenaciously in Otafuku Gai, and it was difficult finding a bathhouse where you weren't obliged to share a heated pool with the opposite sex. On any other day Sakura would have preferred to shower alone in a tiny, grotty bathroom than take a dip with a bunch of strange men, but she couldn't provide her escorts with a good enough excuse to pass up what they saw as a perfect opportunity. Kakashi had given no input. As a handler, he was incredibly hands-off, and Sakura was only too grateful. While her escorts, Jin and Ari, planned to observe her first meeting with her target, Kakashi excused himself. Neither of them really wanted him to see her naked, though Jin and Ari were irritatingly eager.

But the meeting divested her of any expectations she'd held about seduction. It was hard to feel sexy, climbing naked into a square pool full of mostly middle-aged men with not a lick of make-up on. The steam turned her cheeks pink and her incorrigible hair never suited her when it was wet. No short skirts, no lipstick, no plunging cleavage. There was nothing to tantalise or tease with. Everything she possessed was on show for everyone to see, and she sank until the water was up to her chin, wondering which of the men in this room were her Root escorts. They'd never taken their masks off in her presence... and she had no clue if the man fanning himself to her right was just another nin from Suna out for a week's break from work, or one of her very own tormentors who would be watching everything she did and listening to everything she said, ready to report if she showed any sign of not giving this mission her all – or worse, if she deliberately sabotaged it.

The only man she did recognise was on the far side of the pool, and only because Kakashi had given her his photograph. His gaze met hers and for a moment she held it. That was all it had taken. All her agonising of how she was supposed to approach a stranger she felt no attraction or connection to were for nought. Within minutes, he'd waded over and his lean wiry frame was leaning on the edge of the pool beside her in the most repulsive display of masculine swagger. He needed so very little encouragement to believe she was interested. What was her name? Sakura. Where was she from? Konoha. A kunoichi? Of course. Isn't Konoha a bad place for kunoichi right now? That was why she'd left. The Hokage didn't mind her skipping town? Sakura had permission. Did she know she had nice eyes? Thank you.

It didn't seem to matter to Suda Hiroshi that Sakura never once smiled at him, or looked him in the eye. That she wasn't pepper spraying him was all the enthusiastic consent he needed. By the end of that first night she was in his hotel room, between his sheets, resigned to getting it over with as soon as possible. She had hoped, naively perhaps, that her target was a one-night stand sort of man, and once the deed was done he would be glad never to see her again. But a woman willing to sleep with him without demanding money in return must not have been a species he came across very often. When he'd asked if she would be sticking around the town for a while, she'd grimly answered 'yes' and that she would be willing to 'see him again'. He'd been under the impression that they'd been great together. Sakura decided not to puncture his delusions, though she had returned to her own hotel room the next morning, aching all over, and snarling unfairly at Kakashi when he dared to ask if she was alright.

She couldn't in good conscience blame Suda Hiroshi for being an unwitting party to this degradation. But she could blame him for the bite marks and the bruises on her wrist. She could blame him for pulling so hard on her hair and finding her pleading to slow down amusing instead of something to respect. Hiroshi may have been ignorant as to why Sakura had picked him out of all the men in that onsen, of all of the baths in Otafuku Gai, but some of the things she was compelled to 'consent' to when with him left her wondering if this man treated his enemies better than his women.

She'd been lying awake for three hours now, mortally tired, with every passing second intensifying her frustration. Hiroshi's snoring was only getting deeper, and tearing her hair out was beginning to feel like a pretty good way to cope. Unable to take it anymore, she slipped off the bed sheet she'd had clamped beneath her arms and began to stand from the futon.

Hiroshi's breathing changed, giving her only a fraction of a second's warning before his hand lashed out and clamped hard around her upper arm. "Where are you going?" he demanded, even though he was still half asleep.

"I'm going," she said shortly.

"You'll be back," he grunted, and rolled over to resume snoring.

Of course, Sakura would be back... when Jin and Ari decided she should go back. It was not, as he thought, because she liked the tasteless, overpriced jewellery he gave her, or his rough hand in bed. She got up and dressed before quietly slipping out the door. For now, at least, another night was over and she was free.

* * *

Armed with a red umbrella Kakashi stood in the rain, impervious to the stunning women who called to him from beneath the sheltered awnings outside their brothels, telling him not to be shy. His eyes remained trained on the entrance of the hotel, prepared to wait all night if he had to. A large gang of staff were standing around the entrance, clearly on their cigarette break. And then, suddenly, there was Sakura too, emerging between the bodies with all traces of make-up cleaned from her face and her hair pulled back into a tight, damp bun. Now she met his eyes bleakly, wearing a light green coat that was longer than the cocktail dress she wore beneath it.

Neither of them said anything as he held out the umbrella to her and she stepped beneath it. As they set off they walked closely side-by-side beneath its red canvas, but slowly. They'd only made it halfway around the block before she came to a complete stop. Kakashi glanced at her curiously.

"I… I don't really want to go back."

He nodded in understanding, knowing exactly what she was reluctant to face. "They're not there."

"Where are they?"

Whoring, because watching her fuck their target had gotten them hard? "They went out for a drink," he said diplomatically, "They probably won't be back until morning."

"Still…" she said, rubbing her arm self-consciously. "Can we go somewhere else for a while before…"

"Sure," he said softly. "Where would you like to go?"

He'd thought she would like to hit up a bar or a buffet, but instead she nodded towards the river. "Could we… go to the park?"

That surprised him. The park wasn't a particularly popular destination at this time of night in this kind of weather, but perhaps that was the point. He nodded again and walked with her down the hill towards the river, where the lights and sounds of the lively town faded behind them and a gated darkness stretched out on the other side of the trickling water. The gate was locked, to keep out drunken louts and indiscreet lovers who tended to rove around looking for places to desecrate at night, but that was no problem for a pair of ninjas. They climbed nimbly over the barrier and continued on down the dimly lit path until they came to a circular fountain surrounded by a quad of benches. Even though the seats were soaking wet with rain, Sakura sat down on one at once.

Wishing he'd thought to wear some kind of waterproof underwear, Kakashi stoically sat down beside her, keeping the umbrella raised so that at least they wouldn't get much wetter.

Sakura didn't speak. She seemed content to simply stare at the water gurgling up from the mouths of three stone fish, and Kakashi had no desire to pressure her into conversation if all she wanted to do was stare at fish.

But then she took a deep breath. "Could you close the umbrella?"

He hesitated. "We'll get soaked," he pointed out, though she probably knew that. "I don't want you catching a cold…"

"You can't catch a cold from rain," she intoned evenly. "It's a virus."

"Right." Because _that_ reassurance certainly made him welcome the idea of being soaked to the bone with cold water. But if that was what she wanted…

Kakashi closed the umbrella and laid it on the seat beside him. At once, rain droplets were drumming down on his head and creeping down the back of his neck. He hunched his jacket tightly around his throat and sat with his arms tightly crossed, but Sakura was not concerned by the rain. She lifted her face to it and let it soak her dress.

She was crying. She wanted to feel the rain fall because she didn't want him to realise it, but that was her choice and he would play along with the charade if it made her feel better.

After a while though, he began to shiver a little.

Sakura noticed and turned to him distractedly like she'd only just realised he was sitting with her. "I'm sorry, this probably wasn't a good idea. We can go back to the inn if you like," she said, wiping the rain and disguised tears from her face.

"Nah," he said, forcing himself to stop trembling. Why she didn't seem to feel the cold as much as he did? "The two idiots might have come back early."

She looked at the ground. "If we're not there when they get back, we'll be in trouble. I'm not supposed to be out without supervision."

"I'm here," he pointed out.

"They don't trust your supervision, remember?" she said glumly.

Kakashi just gave a monosyllabic grunt and looked away into the shadows beneath the trees. He enjoyed talking about the painful restrictions on both of them during this mission about as much as Sakura did. It was why they passed so much of their time in silence these days. When it hurt to discuss the nightmare they were in, and small talk was unable to gloss over it, there wasn't much left to say.

But tonight Sakura broke her silence. "This guy…" she whispered, her voice nothing more than a thin breath that was nearly lost beneath the pitter-patter of raindrops. "I can't stand him… I can't stand his smell, or his breath, or his hands, or the way he speaks. He's awful. I wish… I wish I could just wrap my hands around his neck sometimes and squeeze until he…"

It was possibly the first time she had spoken about it since he'd knocked on her door a month ago to initiate her into what Hokage Danzou called an 'exciting new program'. Kakashi couldn't stop the shivers from returning. As hard as he'd tried to avoid seeing the subject of those photographs , he hadn't been totally successful. Even if he'd managed to avoid seeing most of the things Sakura was forced to endure, one could guess that the target's reputation for violence on and off the battlefield was not one to take lightly. He even wondered if that was why Danzou had chosen this man in particular as their target.

"No killing," Kakashi reminded her softly. "The cloud country can't be alerted to what we're doing here, and if Suda Hiroshi himself ever suspects..."

"I know," she breathed.

"It'll be over soon."

"This won't be over," she insisted. "I'm stuck here for as long as it takes to complete the objective, but what if that's not possible…?"

"What do you mean?" he asked softly.

She stared off at the fountain, lost in the absolute hopelessness of her situation. Kakashi's cold, wet hand reached across to grip hers, trying to reassure her that at least she wasn't alone, and she jumped, startled, and looked at him suddenly. "Let's run, sensei."

"What?"

"Right now, let's go," she said, coming alive as new fire danced in her eyes and her fingers squeezed his. "You said the idiots won't be back until morning – if we start running now, we could be in the wind country before they even realise we're gone. We could take sanctuary in Suna!"

He tried to smile, but it was painful. "Suna would be one of the first places Danzou's hunter-nin look for us."

"But-"

"We already talked about this weeks ago," he reminded her gently. "Only three missing-nin have survived longer than a month. Orochimaru, Sasuke, and Naruto. Do you really think we have a chance compared to them?"

He hated to say it. Watching the hope fade from her face made him feel like a brute, but four weeks ago when he'd first informed her about this mission, he'd told her that the choice to run had been there. But it was suicide then and it was suicide now.

"So you're saying I just have to bear it?" she asked, and her voice was no longer calm and even.

"I know, it's not fair," he breathed. Never for a moment had he underestimated how hard this would be for her, and he didn't doubt she was suffering. They all suffered. All the women in this program had only two choices – do or die – and he'd seen some of them crack long before Sakura.

He didn't want to see Sakura declared a rogue and hunted down, but was that really worse than what she was enduring now? She had originally turned down his suggestion to flee the village, but perhaps now after experiencing this mission, she had re-evaluated her originally position. Perhaps a short life on the run with nothing but certain death to look forward to was better than this?

Kakashi squeezed her hand back. "We can run," he said, "if that's what you want."

And he meant it. At that very moment he was ready to stand and start running – to leave everyone and everything behind – in order just to taste a modicum of freedom again.

But the light had gone from Sakura's eyes and it wasn't coming back. She smiled at him weakly, gratefully, but she pushed his hand back onto his own knee and let go. "No… this is selfish of me. I can't ask you to die with me, and you'll get in trouble if I escape under your watch. Danzou would suspect you of helping me and then…"

Then he'd probably be executed in the fashion of most dissenters and insubordinate nin.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything," she said, regaining her composure as easily as replacing a mask. "Let's just go back to the inn."

He searched her face. "You're sure?"

All trace of despair and hope was gone. "You're shivering, sensei. Let's go."

For all the good it did, he reopened the umbrella and together they walked back to the same grotty little inn he'd spent all day hiding in. She slept separately from her other teammates, in a room down the hall that was quite a bit smaller with space only enough for a futon and a rack of clothes selected for the mission that she called her 'costumes'. At her door, she patted him on the arm and went inside. "Thanks for the ear," was the last thing she said to him before shutting him out entirely.

Tomorrow they would go back to not talking about it. Then the call would come, and Sakura would be sent out, and it would be another long night of listening to Jin and Ari work themselves into a lustful frenzy over a camera, and knowing that as painful as it was for Kakashi, it was nothing compared to what Sakura was dealing with.

Kakashi went back to the room he shared with the idiots, glad at least that they didn't refrain from frequent all-nighters on the town when their orders had been to watch Sakura's every moon from sunset to sunrise and everything in-between. With any luck they'd both have syphilis by the time they were recalled.

In the corner of the room still sat the camera on his tripod with a packet of photographs propped against the wall. They would be handed to Danzou eventually, either as proof that the mission had been carried out according to plan or to give the old goat some masturbatory aids. He stared at them. Each picture within was a testament to Sakura's suffering, a faithful documentation of her every pain and humiliation. It repulsed him. He wanted to burn the packet and all its contents so that no one would ever get to witness her violation, but at the same time he knew that this was precious. Her suffering was to people like Jin and Ari nothing but pornography. To Kakashi, it was a tiny window into understanding what Sakura was going through... and he turned his eyes away from it.

It wasn't his place on this mission to understand or witness anything. He was here to ensure the success of the mission, but most of all to make sure Sakura was safe and well.

It was a pity that he failed this objective almost every night.

* * *

There was a water stain on the ceiling that appeared to be shaped like a tadpole. Sakura lay back on her blankets and stared up at it, wondering how old it was and what had caused it, and wondering if the rain water that was steadily sinking into the futon beneath her would cause a similar phenomenon for the tenants of the room below her.

She had no desire to change. No desire to dry off. Every time she returned to the inn it was just another long struggle to convince her limbs to cooperate and perform the same old nightly routine. It was a cliché that the stink of violation was something that made one want to wash and scrub at the skin until it was pink and raw. The reality was that Sakura didn't want to take her clothes off ever again. She didn't want to be naked, she didn't want to be vulnerable, and she would lay in a soaking bed all night in yesterday's spoilt cocktail dress, if only Kakashi wouldn't notice and start worrying. Well, he was already worrying, but she didn't want to invoke any more pity from him, however well he hid it.

It was supposed to get easier, wasn't it? After a while the groping hands should become less disturbing, the breath less vile, and the pain more blunted and numbed. But it didn't. It was a wound that kept being picked over, reopened again and again, unable to heal until infection was setting in and every time she went to him she felt like she would _die_ if she had to bear a single moment more-

She closed her eyes and let those thoughts drift away.

Rising from the wet imprint on the sheets, she lethargically began to push her coat off and shed her dress to her waist. New bruises were developing along her arms, but there was nothing she could do about that. Hiroshi would notice if she were to heal herself of all the blemishes that he no doubt took personal pride in. And what were bruises at the end of the day? Just broken vessels and old blood. She had been stomped and kicked and punched by more men and women than she cared to recall. She'd been stabbed, run-through, garrotted, crushed, drowned, and buried alive. There was nothing to fear from bruises, and as far as Hiroshi was concerned, she might as well be just another prostitute in a town where prostitutes were a penny a dozen, and if she didn't like rough men then she would have refused him by now.

But he probably didn't realise that wasn't a choice available to her.

The jewels and money he gave her, as all mistresses were entitled to, were supposed to be handed straight over to her handler, Kakashi, or, since he usually failed to ask for them and refused them when she offered, given to one of her other 'superior' teammates. She imagined resenting this money; it was the monetary value of her body and her dignity, and it felt disturbingly light in her hand. But it was only money and silly rocks, and if anyone deserved it, it was _her_, not those two perverts. And so the money went into her bag, uncounted, and perhaps one day it would come in use when she decided to finally run away.

_Tomorrow_, she promised herself. That day would be tomorrow.

But she'd been saying that to herself since the first night, and she had yet to act. Was it because she was frightened of what would happen to her if she abandoned the mission? When she examined her feelings, she was left only more confused. She knew that she would rather risk death than complete this mission, so why did she do this to herself? Why did she stay?

Because there was another option. It was an option she barely contemplated consciously, but it hovered there on the edge of her awareness refusing to go away, reminding her that between ruin and death there was another choice, if she could just be brave enough to make it.

So was it courage that she was waiting for?

Was she just a coward?

Sakura pulled out a dry night yukata and changed into the gingerly. But something else had fallen out onto the floor with that made her insides contract when she noticed it.

This was the start of it all. This was the herald of her final mission for Konoha, and whenever she closed her eyes and could pretend it was all a nightmare that she could awaken from at any moment, she only needed to open her eyes and look at this thing in order to know nightmares could be very real.

She picked it up numbly and wondered how something so innocuous could make her hand tingle and her stomach turn. It was just a scroll; a red scroll. Yet this colour, in this form, carried a weight to it that made her tremble.

A crash against her door made her jump and nearly wrench her neck as she turned towards it. The sliding panel screeched open. Her lip curled to see Jin hanging there, a bottle in his hand. "You," he slurred, as a noxious smell of booze, cheap perfume, and sex rolled over her. "You pregnant yet?"

Sakura shook her head once, white hot fury boiled beneath her skin.

"Silly bitch," he hiccupped and belched. "We're stuck here until you do, so get a move on. The whores here charge way too much."

She remained stonily silent as he took another swig from the bottle and stepped further into the room.

"Out of curiosity, how much do _you_ charge to let a guy jizz all over your face like that?"

Without stopping to think, because any moment's hesitation would have reminded her that attacking one's superior officer was a bad idea, she ran at the door and threw all her weight and momentum into a kick that sent Jin rocketing back against the wall on the other side of the narrow corridor. He didn't get up again. He just lay there, groaning and trying to open his eyes. A door opened further along the corridor and Kakashi jogged over, dressed in his own night robe.

"What's going on?" And even though his teammate was lying in a senseless heap on the floor, it was Sakura he looked at when he asked, "Are you ok?"

She looked at him, and wondered anxiously if he'd heard what Jin had said before she'd decked him – the guy hadn't been keeping his voice down. It was irrational to feel cold and sweaty at the thought that he might have overheard Jin's lewd comment about her when he had no doubt watched the things she did with Hiroshi every night. Still, there were just some things that she didn't want Kakashi to think of her.

Swallowing, she just mumbled something about drunken idiots and stepped back into her room. She hated that look he gave her as she closed the door, as if there was always something more he wanted her to say. He wore that look as if all she needed to do was ask and he would do anything to help her, however much or little she demanded. The look screamed at her. _Just ask! _Except she _had_ asked, and he had looked pained and explained that running away from this mission was next to impossible.

So just how far would he go to help her anyway?

Tonight, Kakashi would drag Jin to bed, as he did most nights, and when the man woke up in the morning he probably wouldn't remember anything at all. Then later another call would come, and she'd have to go to Hiroshi again. And again. And again.

Sakura sank onto the bed with a low sigh that caught in her throat. Even here, alone, where she had no one but herself to hide from, she couldn't risk breaking down. She controlled her breathing and closed her eyes and... felt something in her hand. She was still holding the scroll.

It slipped from numb fingers and rolled away across the slanted floor to bump against a pile of wet clothes. She stared at it through the dim moonlight, the red dye so thick it looked black.

"Coward..." she whispered to herself as her eye slid shut and she sought sleep.

There, at least, she would be free from nightmares.

* * *

TBC


	4. On The Nature of Daylight

**Scarlet Scroll**

On The Nature of Daylight

* * *

There was an unpleasant, tepid humidity to the air that day, and since Otafuku Gai was the kind of town that only came alive at night, there wasn't much to do except remain at the inn and try to beat Kakashi at card games on the balcony where there might be some modicum of a breeze. It might as well have been a ghost town below them. A few people were ambling along the winding streets, a few others were sweeping away the evidence of another night of hard partying, but most people they saw were passed out discreetly in alleyways and flowerbeds, rather like corpses. It was easier to imagine this was the middle of some warzone instead of the centre of nightlife and adult entertainment for all the five nations. In the bright light of day, the glamour of the evening was finally peeled away to reveal the flaws beneath; they could see the cracks in the walls and the dirty windows, and even some of the infamous comely women were awake and about, but without their make-up and fine clothes they all seemed pretty unremarkable.

The best thing about playing card games against Kakashi was that Sakura had finally found something he was bad at, though this was also equal parts annoying. She doubted he was trying particularly hard, and teaching the basics of poker was more an exercise of patience. It did, however, keep her mind off other things.

Until Jin walked into her room, unannounced as usual and looking none the worse for being knocked unconscious by Sakura a few nights ago. She didn't bother to look up and glare at him because he revelled in his disregard for her privacy.

"Guess what time it is," the idiot cajoled her, and since he knew Sakura wasn't going to humour the guessing game, he swiftly answered his own prompt. "Pregnancy test time! Be a good girl and pop down to the chemist."

"No," said Sakura stolidly, still refusing to look up from the game.

"Yes," said Jin.

"No," said Kakashi, surveying Sakura's sets of cards laid on the floorboards between them. "Her period already started. Snap."

"We're not playing Snap," Sakura sighed. "We're playing Go Fish."

"We are?"

If Jin was surprised or annoyed at being subverted so rapidly, he didn't show it. Instead he seemed smug. "What a shame. I suppose you'll just have to try harder next month. And if that doesn't work out, there's always the month after that. Maybe you weren't using the right positions?"

Sakura's hands were gripping her cards a little too tightly; they were in danger of bending. Kakashi looked patiently at Jin. "Is that all you wanted?" he asked.

Any further pestering on Jin's part would now just look like the cruel immaturity it was, and the idiot had no choice but to smirk and leave. Though Kakashi and Sakura had been playing quietly before they arrived, the silence between them once he'd left was a tense one. It was Sakura's turn to play, but she just stared glassily at her cards, her mind on the other things that Kakashi had hoped to distract her from.

"You ok?" he asked, taking the opportunity of her catatonia to casually add a few more cards to his hand, mistakenly assuming this would be to his advantage.

"Fine," she grunted, sick of him asking that question for how it forced her to lie. "Any fives?"

They played on, and Sakura noticed she was still winning by a mile, even though she was missing half her turns and barely keeping track of the cards. Finally all the sets were laid out on the floor and there were no more cards to play. She looked at them, wondering what to do next.

"Don't let Jin get to you," Kakashi said, gathering up the deck. "He's a… well, he's an idiot. We both know that."

"He's right though," she grumbled, looking out at the rooftops of the town. "We're going to be here for another month now."

"Nothing we can do about that," he responded evenly. "It's not your fault."

She looked at him in annoyance. "I never thought it was."

He shrugged, shuffling the cards with practised ease and precision that defied his clumsiness with the actual game rules. "Jin and Ari might have you believe otherwise."

"Yes, well, they're idiots," Sakura said.

He nodded. "Exactly." He began to deal again.

"I'm sick of playing cards," she said, getting to her feet to stretch. "It gets boring, winning."

"Not a problem I have much experience with," he admitted.

Sakura moved over to the balcony and looked down over the balustrade at the street below. Although it wasn't as busy as it was in the evening, some of the less seedy establishments were doing business. Kakashi watched her back. "Do you want to go out?" he asked.

She turned from the view. "No." He'd mistaken her interest in the street. She'd only been looking for an excuse not to sit near Kakashi and have to face him. It wasn't that he annoyed her, but in some moments, between others, it was difficult to keep her cool, indifferent attitude up around him. Especially when he tried to be nice and cheer her up. Ironically, this was when she most felt like crying.

Now she stood, looking blindly about the room, picking at moss on the wooden balustrade with her nails. Kakashi wasn't saying anything now, just shuffling cards, and that made her feel even more fraught and restless than before. When she glanced at him she noticed that as he leant forward, something tiny and gold on a delicate chain swung from his neck. It looked like it was the hiragana character for 'ki'. For power? Energy? Life force? It was undoubtedly some kind of charm necklace and rather feminine. Why hadn't she noticed that before?

"What's that?" she asked. "Around your neck?"

He touched the light pendant and pushed it back beneath his shirt with a shrug. "Gift from a friend," he said. "For luck, I think."

Her mother had given her something similar for her eighteenth two years ago, but Sakura had never worn it. She still didn't know what she was going to say to her mother when she returned... _if_ she ever returned at this rate.

"Do you wish you could go home?" she asked quietly.

He shrugged again. "Don't we all?"

Yes, but...

Sakura bit her lip. "What if we're stuck here? For six months until we're reassigned to some other target?"

Kakashi paused and looked up at her, gaze curious. "I'm sure we'll only need a couple more weeks," he said carefully, after a lengthy moment of consideration. "Hopefully we won't have to be here longer than that."

"What if we do?"

"Why?" he asked. "What makes you say that?"

She looked away again and lapsed back into silence. Kakashi waited patiently, but when she didn't answer, he turned back to the cards and began to pair them off, building a fragile little card house. That was too much for Sakura. Just the utter banality of seeing her sensei do something as dull as building a house of cards on the worst mission of her life made her want to scream. How dare anyone be so bored they had to entertain themselves with such trivialities when she was going through hell?

So when he was carefully attempting to balance the last two cards to form the zenith of his masterpiece, Sakura went over and knocked down the base with her toe. The cards tumbled and cascaded. Kakashi lowered his hands and looked at the mess with blank dismay.

"Let's go out," Sakura said.

He smiled up at her faintly. "Then get dressed. I'll be waiting downstairs."

He left cheerfully enough, which was another annoying habit of his these days: he just never got angry anymore, or at least not at her. He pitied her too much to even roll his eyes when she turned into a bitch or a bear.

Alone, she shucked out of her sleeping yukata and began pawing through her rack of 'costumes'. For various reasons, when she left the inn she couldn't draw too much attention to herself, since there was a chance that Hiroshi or anyone closely associated with him would recognise her on the street. As far as anyone in the village was concerned, she was just another woman of the night, and so she had to dress like one.

Fortunately that didn't mean six-inch heels, tube tops and hot pants, or anything else more elaborate than what other civilians wore during the day. The women of Otafuku Gai had a life outside work too, of course.

Sakura's costumes were a mix of day clothes and moderately fancy evening wear. Nothing too expensive or cheap. Her first week in Otafuku Gai had been spent organising a whole new wardrobe, being fitted for clothes she would probably only wear once. Some of it was no longer wearable, having been ripped and torn during countless 'sessions', like the dress she wore when she first went to meet Hiroshi.

She ran her hands over the blue dress in question, feeling the knotted stitching where the straps had been sewn roughly back to the body of the dress by ridiculously practical hands – Kakashi's hands. He lacked the surgeon-like precision with a needle that she had, but all shinobi learned needle-work all the same. Repairing clothes and equipment came with the job, whether you were male or female. Being quite feminine at heart, she was a great lover of clothes, and ordinarily she might have enjoyed a mission where she was given a whole new wardrobe of beautiful dresses to play with, but each dress after she wore it felt ruined afterwards, even if it was repaired, even if it had never been damaged at all.

However, she'd used up most of her costumes by now and she had no choice but to start re-wearing them. Sakura flapped out the blue dress and slipped it on, followed by her green cardigan to hide the repair job, and tried not to remember the way the straps had cut into her shoulders and the seams beneath her arms had torn when Hiroshi had ripped her out of the dress. He'd definitely been the kind of man who started as he meant to go on, and he'd laughed at her expression when he'd pushed her, torn-clothing and all, straight onto the bed barely thirteen seconds after she'd walked in the door. He'd said she 'quivered like a virgin'.

It wasn't until many hours later when she was back in her own little dark room that she began to calm down and think about what he said. Because, no, she hadn't acted like a virgin. She'd acted like a woman who had not enjoyed being grabbed and pushed and her arms held down. Was that so hard to understand? There were no words to describe just how powerfully Sakura was relieved when Kakashi had intercepted Hiroshi's communications the following night and told her that since he'd requested one of his regular girls instead she probably wouldn't be needed. Except Jin and Ari had found this hilarious and had made sure she understood this was because she was a 'bad lay'.

But any hope that Hiroshi really had found her distasteful had quickly begun to fade when he contacted her the following week, again, and again.

She'd gradually learnt, that the more sober he was, the crueller he behaved. Whenever she could, she tried to ply him with drinks before settling down for business, but this didn't always work. Sometimes the guy was in no mood for stalling. And then he'd started to request her more often... last week he'd wanted to be together every night. He'd wanted to see her again tonight, but she wouldn't be going. If Jin or Ari tried to make her go, she would put her foot down. Even if they had no sympathy for how painful sex was for her during menstruation, there would be little gained by sleeping with their target as far as the mission was concerned. Even real mostresses took time off. She was sure Hiroshi would find some other bit to chew on.

And again... she noticed she was physically trembling with relief from the thought of a reprieve, however brief, from that vile man.

A knock on the door jerked her out of her wits. "Sakura, you ready yet?"

She looked down at herself and realised she'd been sitting on her futon, staring at nothing for so long she'd worn the patience of the most tardy ninja in existence. "Coming," she said, and left behind her wearisome thoughts to join him.

Traffic was heavier around the marketplace, and this was where they went first. It was Kakashi who was leading the way; Sakura just trailed after him like a lost sausage, neither caring where they went nor particularly interested. She looked at the wares at each stall without noticing what was on sale, running her fingers rudely over crafted jewellery and fruit and clothing. Kakashi stopped at a booth that appeared to sell musical instruments. For some reason this interested him, but Sakura couldn't think why, until he picked up some kind of fiddle – the seller haughtily corrected her it was a _viola – _and plucked a few notes with his fingers. It didn't sound like the inharmonious twang it would probably make in Sakura's hands.

"You play?" she asked incredulously.

"Once upon a time," he answered, "I'm probably very rusty now. I'm better with a shamisen."

Oh, god. "I'll pay you not to demonstrate."

"Not a fan?"

They were in Otafuku Gai; the pleasure town. Not a night went by when she couldn't hear some hack whacking away at a shamisen through an open window somewhere; it was the instrument of choice for the highest class of female entertainers. And yes, by now the sound had begun to grate on her. "I've heard cats being booted up the ass that sound better than the shamisen."

Kakashi handed the instrument back to the seller who was looking at Sakura as if he'd never seen such a philistine in his life. He _did_ have a whole shelf of shamisen behind him, after all, so she'd most likely just insulted his bestselling item.

They moved on, and Kakashi bought them both some octopus balls on a stick and a festive kind of mask that Sakura was rather too content to wear. She liked looking out of two little holes in a wooden mask, able to see others who couldn't see her. She was anonymous. Perhaps that was why Kakashi had such a fondness for masks.

This mission was going to turn her into as much an anti-social freak as him...

There was some kind of play going on in the middle of town, so they joined the crowd of people to watch, and that was how they lost most of the afternoon. Sakura plucked Kakashi's sleeve several times to hint that she was bored, but it turned out the play was some kind of production based on Icha Icha, and Kakashi would not be torn away for love nor money.

It was quite silly. There were just a lot of actors running around the stage making rude jokes and pretending to have sex with all kinds of terrible visual metaphors. But then this was probably G-rated by Otafuku Gai standards.

Finally it finished, and embarrassingly Kakashi clapped the hardest of anyone there, though he had the decency to look self-conscious when he caught sight of Sakura's scowl. "It wasn't as good as the book," he said.

"Can we go eat now?" she asked. Her stomach had been rumbling throughout most of the play, so she was glad to head back through the markets to find an open soba bar. One could never be short of cafés and restaurants of all kinds in this town, and though they had their pick of cuisine, Sakura wanted nothing more than a frazzled young woman working over a steaming hot plate, flipping noodles and grunting antisocially in response to orders. When everywhere she looked she saw unrelenting entertainment, it was a relief to creep into a shady little bar where the only entertainment was the badly tuned radio playing behind the chef.

"You up for a drink next?" Kakashi asked, when she finally finished and pushed her bowl away. As always he'd finished way before her.

Sakura shrugged uncertainly. On the one hand she didn't feel like going out and drinking because the thing about living in constant despair was that although alcohol could take it away for a few hours, the come-down afterwards was crashing. Yet on the other hand, she didn't want to go back to the inn because there was a higher chance she'd run into her chaperones, and there were few things she hated more than those two idiots.

"You have to let loose eventually," Kakashi said, rooting around for coins to pay his half. "Don't you think you should unwind?"

"I'm fine," she said shortly.

"I'll go on my own if you don't want to come," he said.

Damn. That meant an evening alone at the inn, and facing her teammates alone was always more volatile when Kakashi wasn't there to mediate. "Fine," she sighed, making sure he knew that he had all but twisted her arm. "If you want my company so badly, I'll come with you."

She knew she wasn't exactly enjoyable company right then and hadn't been for a while, but Kakashi smiled as if nothing could please him more. "Good."

After the soba bar they went in search of a proper bar. Evening was approaching and the slumbering town was coming back to life in its most vivacious districts. Kakashi seemed to have a specific place in mind to show her, and as they took a winding, well-trod path through the town, Sakura wondered just how often he'd been here before to be so familiar with it.

"Hatake Kakashi?"

Said man stopped and turned at the sound of his name, and Sakura peered around him curiously at the woman standing on the porch of a nearby bordello. Unlike the women standing and sitting around her, she was older and heavier, though her face was smooth and full, making her look younger than the grey in her hair indicated.

"It _is_ you, isn't it, Kakashi?" the woman called, tapping a closed fan against her bosom. "I'd know that face anywhere."

Considering very little of Kakashi's face was even visible, this was all the more impressive.

Kakashi seemed non-plussed, and he slowly tilted his head on one side. "Madame Wisteria?" he inquired silkily. "You're looking lovelier than I remember."

A disbelieving hiss escaped the woman. "I, however, don't remember that charm at all," she said. "You were such an awkward young thing when I last knew you. What brings you back to Otafuku Gai? Business or pleasure?"

"Pleasure, of course," he responded without missing a beat, and he really was oozing a lot of charm into so few words. Sakura had never seen anything like it.

'Madame Wisteria' switched her gaze on Sakura. "And who is _this_ awkward young thing?" she asked.

Sakura felt a little flush of embarrassment. She knew she was awkward and young, but she hoped no one noticed most of the time.

And then Kakashi said something she hadn't expected at all.

"This is my friend, Sakura," he told the woman.

Normally when Kakashi introduced her, it was almost always as his 'teammate', or his 'colleague', or even sometimes his 'partner', and Sakura liked that because it always denoted respect and equality, and it was a great step up from the days when he introduced her to people as his 'student'.

But he'd never before introduced her as a friend. And suddenly she knew it was the first time he had ever referred to her this way at all. Did he really consider her a friend?

The significance of her new title was lost completely on Kakashi and Madame Wisteria, and the latter nodded politely at Sakura, who nodded in return. Awkwardly, as becoming of her youth. "How do you two know each other?" Sakura asked before she could think the question through properly in her head. Only after it had escaped her lips did she realise how stupid it was.

Wisteria was clearly a prostitute.

"Back when I was a slender thing like you, my dear," the woman said, "when I was the belle of the house and I had fifteen clients knocking on my door every hour, one day there came a knock on my door like any other. And when I opened it there stood the most beautiful young man I'd ever seen."

Kakashi laughed slightly, sounding embarrassed. Sakura was beginning to _really_ wish she hadn't asked.

"And do you know what he said to me?" Wisteria was going to tell her anyway, so Sakura just shook her head numbly. "He said, 'I heard you were having a problem with a drunk. Please allow me to escort him out.'"

Sakura blinked.

"For you see, one of our clients had got a little rowdy that evening and we were having a little trouble convincing him to leave without pawing all our girls, so I put in a call to the security detail, and your friend Kakashi was the one they sent over."

"Oh," Sakura murmured, feeling guilty for assuming anything otherwise.

"You thought I laid him?" Wisteria looked terribly amused at her expense.

Sakura didn't have the nerve to admit that was exactly what she'd thought.

The woman winked at her. "Only as payment."

"Oh."

"Many times."

"Oh."

"She's messing with you, take no notice," Kakashi said softly, and turned back to Wisteria with that same melting charm. "We'll have to take our leave, Madame. I promised to show Sakura a bar on the North Bank and it's almost happy hour."

"Well, if you fancy catching up for old time's sake, you know where to find me," she said, and then winked at Sakura again. "You too, my lamb. We have many services for the pleasure of ladies as well."

Sakura's throat had just gone very dry.

"Thank you for the kind offer," Kakashi bowed and then began hustling Sakura away since she was stood a little transfixed in the middle of the street.

"Was she really just messing with me?" Sakura asked, a little hopefully.

"Yeah... most of what she told you was made-up," he said, looking a little hesitant. "I was never on the security detail here."

"Then how-"

"How do you think someone such as myself might know someone such as her? How any visiting man around here knows her?"

"Oh." Sakura seemed to be saying that a lot.

"And she was never slender."

That wasn't supposed to be surprising – the visiting-a-prostitute thing, not the liking-big-girls thing, because the latter _was_ a little surprising. Yet even though she knew the mantra that men had their urges which seemed to infer this was something she had to respect, and that Otafuku Gai lay close enough to Konoha that a lot of men had visited it to dabble in pleasure, even if only once out of curiosity, the thought Kakashi was one of them... well, it disappointed her.

She had never held a strong moral opinion on prostitutes, because however she looked it, ninja and prostitutes were two sides of the same coin. She was employed to kill, they were employed to fuck, and at the end of the day, her profession did more harm to the world than the ladies of the night who took money in return for giving pleasure. How could anyone in Sakura's position look down on such women without feeling like a raging hypocrite?

However, Sakura's opinions on the clientele was a different matter. The people who paid for sex... it seemed a sad and grubby way to procure physical intimacy without having to give consideration for the other person involved. She had always mildly held such men in disdain. After meeting Hiroshi, it had hardened into true contempt.

She didn't want to think of Kakashi like that.

But, she thought, as she looked at him and he smiled faintly back at her, he probably didn't see it that way. It had all happened a long time ago...

"Here we are," he announced, gesturing to a drab little entrance that Sakura wouldn't have looked twice at if he hadn't drawn attention to it. The look of the place didn't fill her with confidence of its quality, but she trusted Kakashi and his taste (in some matters, definitely not others) and she kept her reservations to herself before following him inside.

For a public house, it was rather cosy and well-lit, and not particularly busy yet. Each little room had its own wood-burning fire, but the seats around each were already occupied so they headed to the bar.

"Beer," Kakashi said to the bartender.

"Plum wine with green tea, please," Sakura requested. And when the drinks arrived, she carefully examined the glass for lip marks.

At least it passed the cleanliness test.

"Not bad," she said to Kakashi, who was obviously awaiting her approval. "You know your way around Otafuku Gai pretty well, don't you?"

He shrugged. "It's my job."

"To know where all the pubs are?"

"Ah – no. To memorise the map of an area before I'm sent there. Knowing where all the best places to eat and drink is a gift," he said, tapping his nose as if it was a secret he would never give up.

Sakura reckoned his talent lay in hopping so many bars that eventually he found a few hidden gems. She raised her eyebrows politely and sipped her drink. It had been a while since she'd had umeshu, and she'd always enjoyed the sweet taste, but it wasn't as nice as the plum wine back in Konoha. The taste seemed... muted.

Oh, what did it matter. It all came from the same can, she was just being stupid...

Kakashi noticed her sigh and elbowed her gently. "I brought you out to cheer you up, not drown your sorrows. No sighing into your drink."

"Sorry," she mumbled. And then, because he looked as if he was going to say something serious but her – about the mission – about Hiroshi or their vile, idiot teammates – and she just didn't think she could bear that, she plastered on a smile and said, "When did you learn the violin?"

"The viola. I can probably play the violin too, though, they're so similar," he said. "But it's not really what you think. After I got the sharingan, my sensei was doing his best to help me learn how to use it because the Uchiha refused to train me... they were kind of upset that I had it, so I went through a lot of unorthodox ways of testing its powers. I learnt how to play the viola in one afternoon. Kinda made me wish I'd had the sharingan back when I was learning the shamisen."

"Why would you ever have learnt the shamisen?" she asked, disgusted.

"It was part of the mandatory curriculum at the academy," he told her. "They used to believe that a rounded education enhanced a fighter, and dabbling in musical training was part of that. I don't know how much good it did. They must have taken it off the curriculum before you entered the school."

Thank goodness. Sakura mulled over her drink and asked, "Do you think the academy really prepares us for the nature of our work?"

Kakashi shrugged. "How'd you mean?"

"Everything I know, I learned after I left the academy. I don't really remember much of what I learned at school anymore," she sighed.

"You probably retain more than you think."

"Yeah? And how often do you need to play a shamisen in this line of work?"

"Well, it's an unexpected party piece, at least."

"I... I learned to pick and arrange _flowers_ at school," she said, not quite believing it herself though at the time she'd never thought twice about it. "Kunoichi curriculum... learning the difference between an acer rubrum and a red maple."

Kakashi pondered this carefully. "And what is the difference-"

"They're both the same damn tree," she sighed. "And I could tell you which flowers are appropriate to take to a funeral depending on your relationship with the deceased, because I know the meaning of most of the flowers native to the fire country, and then some, but how does that help prepare me for the kind of work that I do?"

"'Nother umeshu, please," Kakashi said to the bartender, noticing Sakura's drink was now mostly ice."

"More wine, less tea," Sakura called after the man, and once a fresh drink was in her hand she did her best not to sigh into it the way Kakashi advised her against. "You know, I actually envy the kids being taught in the academy today. At least under Danzou, they'll be prepared for the crap he'll throw at them."

"And no doubt they're being taught how he's a revolutionary leader of great wisdom and enlightenment," Kakashi said quietly.

"Someone ought to just kill him," Sakura said, meaning every word.

Kakashi touched the back of her hand. "Be careful what you say," he said, even more softly than before. "We're still in the fire country... and Danzou has eyes in unexpected places."

"Literally," she murmured.

He snorted and let his gaze wander the room as he took a deep gulp of beer. Suddenly he was tapping her hand again. "Come on – the seats by the fire are free."

Sakura tried hard not to spill her drink as Kakashi all but dragged her into an alcove of an adjoining room where the smell of burning apple wood hung strongly in the air. The seats were more comfortable and the heat was pleasant enough to take the edge off the intruding chill of the evening. But now Kakashi was sitting opposite her, and there was a small table between them, and facing him instead of facing her drink was more awkward than she realised.

Only because she felt that whenever Kakashi was allowed to look into her face for more than a few moments, he would look right through her and be able to see all the things she desperately tried to hide. She focused her stare instead at the fire and hoped he would do the same. He drunk slowly in silence, but his gaze lingered on her a little more than usual. Perhaps she was being too obvious in trying to avoid his eyes?

"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked.

Sakura held out her hand. If he was going to speak clichéd idioms, he could damn well put his money where his mouth was if he wanted _her_ thoughts.

"Jeez..." Kakashi grunted as he rummaged around his pockets. He found something, blew a bit of lint off it and pressed it into her hand. "That should buy me at least ten thoughts," he said.

Now Sakura raced for something to say. A lot of thoughts bounced around her head and she'd lost track of them already. Right then all she was thinking was how warm this coin was from his body heat.

She could play it cool and tell him she'd been thinking about something as mundane and uncontroversial as flowers. Seeing as how they'd been talking about it a moment ago, it wouldn't be unfeasible. But she felt heavy, and talking about light-hearted nonsense would take more out of her than if she simply spoke of some of things that were really weighing on her mind.

"Why do you think people use prostitutes?" she asked, flicking a glance up to him to gauge his reaction.

There was a little tightening of the muscles around his eye, that could have meant anything from surprise to distaste or just confusion. Perhaps all of the above? "Well," he said, dragging the word out as if he was giving her question some serious thought. "I suppose there's lots of different reasons."

"Like?"

"Maybe some men just want the pleasure without the fuss of courting a girl? Or maybe the girl they like only takes cash up front, you know?"

Now Sakura narrowed her eyes slightly. That was his first reason he'd given, and being a man who had used prostitutes before, he'd probably given her his own reasons. "So it's not something you'd do if you were in a relationship with someone?"

He shrugged, probably beginning to realise if he hadn't already that she was drilling _him_ personally on his reasons.

"Hiroshi's married," she said, gazing into the fire. "He's got five children at home in the lightning country. The oldest is seventeen, she's a girl. The youngest is five, a son. His favourite is his ten year old boy. He thinks he could make Raikage one day. And... he seems to love his wife, but if that was true, why would he spend so much time here with girls like me?"

She didn't look at Kakashi, and he said nothing, though she could tell he was watching her as intensely as she watched the snapping, hissing logs in the fire.

"He talks to you about his family?" Kakashi asked after the silence had stretched on longer than was comfortable.

"He confides a lot of things in me, actually. Do all men do that? Even though they know the woman is only there because of his money...? It's not like I actually give a damn what he's getting his daughter for her eighteenth."

Especially when one of his favourite demands was that Sakura call him 'Daddy' when he fucked her from behind.

"I don't think he'll ever tell me anything of strategic importance, but the more I'm with him the more I know about _him..._ and the less I understand." She swallowed and closed her eyes. Something close to grief was threatening to overwhelm her. "He confuses me. I hate him so much, and yet I know more about him than I know about you, my own teammate, my own friend."

Kakashi leant forward in his chair.

"I just want to go home," she whispered.

"We will soon," he said, sounding so confident. "This month will be the last, I promise."

She looked at him, exasperated. "You don't know that."

"There's no reason why you shouldn't conceive. You're young and healthy and-"

"And did anyone think to ask that of Hiroshi?" she snapped, though her voice was barely above a whisper.

He sat back. "Well, he's had five children-"

"The last of which was born five years ago," she interrupted again. "He's nearly fifty, Kakashi-sensei..."

"We'll be out of here soon," he said soothingly. "I promise."

"You're not listening to me." She looked tiredly down at her hands. "We're not getting out of here this month. Or the next month. We'll be stuck here for the rest of the year, because Hiroshi is sterile."

Kakashi froze, staring at her blankly like he had no idea what she'd just said. "You sound very sure of that," he remarked eventually.

"I told you, he confides a lot in me," Sakura said. "He told me he was sterile weeks ago, so he didn't have to wear a... you know."

"Some guys say that just to get out of wearing it," Kakashi said dubiously. "Are you sure-"

"I never asked him to wear one, obviously!" she hissed. "That would kinda defeat the mission objective! He volunteered the information, and at this point, I don't have any reason to think he was lying."

"Then we'll tell the Jin and Ari. There's no point staying here if there's no chance of conceiving. We can go home _tonight_."

Sakura looked at him, almost pitying his naivety, and guilty for what she was about to tell him. "I already told Ari," she said quietly. "He said I was lying in order to get out of the mission. They don't believe me, and they won't break their backs to find evidence either way. They're content to spend six months in Otafuku Gai since it's no skin off their noses."

"Then I'll tell them," Kakashi said, getting to his feet.

"They'd think quite rightly that you're relying on my word, and they'd think you were a sucker for believing me," she said. "It won't work. I'm stuck here... I'm stuck with that guy."

She was at least grateful that unlike the others, Kakashi hadn't leapt to the assumption she was lying... but she wondered if the doubtful expression in his gaze meant it was now occurring to him. It wasn't an unreasonable assumption to make; Sakura _would_ have lied if she'd thought for a moment that it could work. Perhaps what was bothering him most was that she'd gone to Ari first.

He had to understand... Danzou had sent them on this mission together to put them both through hell, and if she had a choice between discussing the humiliating details of her mission with a friend like Kakashi or two jerks like Ari and Jin... she would rather go to the jerks every time. Who cared what they thought of her, or how they saw her? But she cared about what Kakashi thought...

Yet it was now only fair that he knew exactly how long they were going to be stuck here.

"We won't be reassigned for another five months at this rate," she told him.

"Do you still want to run?"

She looked up at him and saw the steely resolve in his gaze. "No, you were right the first time," she sighed. "It would just be leaping right out of the pot and into a fire pit."

She dropped her hands into her lap and stared at the drink on the table. It was mysteriously empty. Perhaps that was why she was feeling a little loose-lipped tonight. Most of the time she tried not to talk about the mission at all. Or perhaps she was just sick of ignoring the gargantuan elephant in the room.

Kakashi stood and grabbed her wrist to drag her up too. "Come on," he said.

"What?"

He dropped some change on the table and pulled her across the pub, till they were out the entrance and back on the street. Definitely busier. Sakura was jostled on all sides by elbows and shoulders and loud music was blaring from somewhere nearby, but Kakashi never let go of her hand, even though her fingers with lax and clammy.

"What are you up to?" she called. Kakashi had stopped and was looking around over the heads of the surrounding revellers.

"Over here," he announced suddenly, and began dragging her back through the ground to another building. Another pub – bar or club? She hoped it wasn't a brothel.

Pushed in through the doorway, she was swept up in a whirlwind of warmth and raucous singing. More loud music was playing in here and the ground was shaking – and that was because she was surrounded by people stomping their feet and whipping around like they were trying to crack the floorboards.

Sakura took an instinctive step back towards the door, wondering if she'd intruded into some kind of lunatic asylum. Kakashi pushed her forward, right into the heart of the swooping, stomping crowd, and whirled her around to take her hands. What the hell was he doing? Had he gone mad? "Sensei-"

"Shut up, Sakura."

Then he was moving along with everyone else and Sakura had to stagger along with him, lest she be stomped on too.

This wasn't the kind of dancing she was used to back in Konoha, where clubs played music and people without an ounce of rhythm in their bones stood in one place and flailed about mildly. Nor was it an elegant waltz or the kind of quick-step competitive dancing she sometimes saw on TV. This was just a lot of people in very little space, skipping around to some kind of choreographed mass dance that they all seemed to instinctively know. Even Kakashi seemed to know the steps and where to move. And just when Sakura thought she was getting the hang of spinning and stomping her feet in time to everyone else, they would all suddenly jump sideways, and Sakura would begin staggering all over again.

"Getting the hang of it?" Kakashi called to her over the din of singing and whistles. He was dancing as well as anyone else. The prat.

"No," Sakura said emphatically, but she had to admit it was quite compelling. She would have more bruises on her toes tomorrow than she'd collected all year, but there was a kind of fun mindlessness to prancing around like an idiot.

"Look sharp, Sakura." Kakashi seized her around the waist and lifted her up high, turning in a quarter circle as he did so. Before she had any time to scold him, she realised she'd been deposited in front of a new partner.

Oh, boy. She looked over her shoulder and saw Kakashi was dancing with a new partner too – a woman who knew how to move a lot better than Sakura did.

"New to this?" asked her partner.

It must have been painfully obvious, but fortunately after a few turns and two more jumps, she was picked up and tossed back to Kakashi with few gaffes. That was better. Sakura didn't feel so bad when she stepped on _his_ feet by accident.

Finally, after a little more swooping and quite a bit of whirling, the music stopped and everyone was clapping and shouting gleefully. Sakura bowed to her partner like everyone else then promptly turned and began walking off the dance floor.

"Oh, no you don't," Kakashi grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her back. "You'll enjoy the next one."

She wanted to ask how the hell he knew that when the music hadn't even started yet. When she glanced over at the musicians' stage, she saw one of them was getting out a shamisen. She smothered a grin that threatened to break out across her face and went instead with a contrived gasp of horror. "Oh, you fiend, what have I done to deserve this!"

Kakashi laughed at her expression. Then the drums began, and the strings of the shamisen began twanging away, and a new dance began that was preciously slower than the last which allowed her to keep pace with everyone else a little more easily. He could laugh at her all he liked. Mere mortals like Sakura who didn't have the benefit of the sharingan to help them mimic movement perfectly had to make do with just learning by trial and error.

But he was right, annoyingly. Whereas the last song had been fast paced and the dancing had seemed to follow a random melody of its own, this time the dancers were moving in time to the beats of an upbeat marching song. This was something Sakura could follow. _Step, step, turn, clap. Spin, spin, spin –_ ok, less spinning – _back, step, step, turn, clap_. And the shamisen wasn't nearly as irritating when it was played by a master instead of a warbling prostitute with her client.

"You're getting the hang of it," Kakashi said encouragingly.

She smiled her appreciation. Now that she had the simple steps down pat, she felt like she was part of the music; the same way she felt when she pulled off a flawless taijutsu sequence. Her body was an instrument – powerful and graceful and, wait, where the hell was Kakashi going?

He'd turned from the dance and collared a young man standing a little way behind him, clapping in time to the music, and without a word of explanation to either of them, he all but slung said man into his previous position. "Keep going," he called to Sakura. "I'll be back in a minute."

Her new partner linked arms with her cheerfully enough. After three spins, Sakura lost sight of Kakashi and was back to concentrating on the dance. She assumed he was just answering the call of nature after all that beer and would be back soon, so she carried on stepping and turning and clapping in time to the music with very little thought of her lost partner. When a new song began, she took the hand of her new partner and swirled and crouched along with everyone else, and she was glad that he was picking it up as he went along too. It was a refreshing change from always being lumped with Mr Smarty-pants who was automatically Good At Everything, and it made her feel less clumsy by contrast.

But two songs passed and Sakura was beginning to wonder what had happened to Mr Smarty-pants. How long did it take to answer nature's call anyway? She tried looking around, but with all these bobbing heads it was difficult to see anyone more than a few feet away.

Another song ended and a new sweeping gigue arrived that involved a lot of flicking ankles while all dancers skipped in a giant circle. Utter madness, and yet Sakura still laughed breathlessly as everyone skipped inwards, crashed, and bounced back again, as if crashing into strangers was a highly enjoyable way to waste an evening, and when she pirouetted she finally glimpsed her lost partner.

Kakashi was standing by the wall, clapping along to the music with all the other spectators.

When the music finally died down, Sakura weaselled away from the dance floor to approach him. "You were gone long enough to fill a lake," she remarked, having to raise her voice over the din. The next song had already started up and it was a loud, fast one – she was quite glad to have stepped out.

"What?" Kakashi gave her a puzzled look, either unable to hear her or not understanding what she meant. "I got something for you."

"From the toilet?" She leaned back. "You can keep it, thanks."

He crooked his finger for her to follow him, and they slipped between the throng of spectators to escape out the door again. The busy street, which had seemed so crowded before, felt blessedly cool and quiet by comparison. Somewhere nearby, firecrackers were popping and showered sparks filled the darkened sky. It was the same as any other night in Otafuku Gai, but this time she truly felt the air of celebration, and she followed Kakashi up a steep alley till they were standing on a corner by a fruit vendor.

He turned to her, cocking his head. "You're smiling," he said.

"So?" She shrugged her shoulders defensively. It wasn't a crime to smile, even though she knew she hadn't done much smiling lately.

"Here." Kakashi reached into his pocket and held out a loop of jingling beads and red silk string. "I got this for you."

She blinked in surprise, her hands slowly reaching up to accept the gift. Pink quartz, painted jade beads, and a charm of a fat, smiling cat with its paw raised. "What..."

"It's a luck charm," he said simply. "Now we both have one."

Her smile flitted back across her face, more uncertainly this time, "Thank you," she said, slipping the bracelet over her wrist and pulling the strings to tighten it. The fit was perfect and the colours were her favourites, but she still looked a little curiously at Kakashi, wondering what had brought on such a fit of generosity.

He understood the unasked question in her gaze. "I know there isn't much I can do for you out here, on this mission," he said quietly. "But if I can make you smile, just for a few minutes...?"

His words brought her crashing back down to earth like nothing else could. Tipsy on the plum wine and the dancing, she had actually been able to forget, for a little while at least, where she was and why she was in this strange town. And forget completely that in a couple of days she would have to go back to Hiroshi.

"And I know you don't like letting me in on what's going on between you and Suda Hiroshi, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I'm right here. You don't have to go to Ari or Jin or anyone else. I want to be able to help you any way I can."

His hands came up to rest on her tensed shoulders, large and warm and strong. Physically, he was one of the most reassuring people she knew. But emotionally...?

"If you need help," he said, "please ask. All you have to do is ask and I'll do everything in my power to help."

She looked away. Hiding in the shadows of her thoughts was her last resort. But for all his platitudes about helping her, she knew there were just some things he wouldn't do and she couldn't ask of him.

When she didn't acknowledge the conviction behind his words, his fingers tightened ever so slightly. "I can kill him," he said, so simply and easily that it took a moment to realise what he'd said.

"Who? Hiroshi or Danzou?" she whispered incredulously.

"Either. Both."

Damn, he really was crazy, wasn't he? Kakashi wasn't strong enough to kill Danzou, and even if he was, the Hokage's supporters would end him before Danzou's body ever hit the ground. Then _they'd_ be the ones to inherit Konoha. As bad as Danzou was, his supporters were far worse. They were as crazy and cruel as him but without their leader to keep them in line and focus that radical energy into blind obedience, it would be anarchy. Sakura didn't think Kakashi could be so reckless, not just for her sake alone. And as vile a person as Hiroshi was, did he deserve to be murdered because he was an unwitting pawn in a scarlet-scroll mission? "If Hiroshi dies I'll simply be moved on to the next man," she reminded him quietly. "And why would you take on Danzou? I thought you had no intention of becoming a martyr."

"I would if that was what you asked of me."

"So what am I supposed to say? 'Go get yourself killed for my sake, please?'" She rolled her eyes and shrugged his hands off. "If I want anyone dead, I'll do it myself, thank you. I don't want or need that kind of help."

"Then you'll at least let me be a friend?" he asked. "You'll stop trying to keep me out of things, and you'll keep trying to have fun?"

"Oh, you think having your feet covered in bruises is fun, do you?"

He nodded. "Looked like it."

"It wasn't so bad," she admitted grudgingly.

"Do you want to go back?" He gestured in the vague direction of the club they'd left.

"No... I think I've had a long day and I'm tired," she said, her head dipping low. "Thank you."

"For making you tired?"

"And for this." She held up her hand to show him the charm bracelet. "And for... offering to kill our boss."

He sighed, like he was disappointed she'd turned the offer down. "I suppose you want to go back to the inn?"

She thought of Jin and Ari, and how likely it was that they were already out fishing for women to spend the rest of the night with. It was probably safe to go back, so she nodded, and turned with him to head back down the alley, back toward the district where their inn lay. Kakashi's arm gathered loosely around her shoulders as they walked. She kept close to his side, glad of the amity he offered. Even if he couldn't kill for her, or magically spirit her away where no one could find her, he could at least make her smile.

And maybe...

"Sensei, would you-"

She cut herself off. The sound of his title froze her own tongue. _No,_ she told herself, horrified. She couldn't ask him that. She couldn't ask her _sensei_ that.

"Would I what?" he asked, squeezing her shoulder cajolingly.

Sakura shook her head, swallowing. "Nothing. Let's just go back."

* * *

TBC


	5. The Last Man

**A/N: Trigger warning **for more explicit depictions**.**

**Scarlet Scroll**

The Last Man

* * *

The doors of the elevator slid back and the hallway of the corridor stretched before her like a runway. All she had to do was walk down it, but Sakura couldn't move. Her muscles had frozen up. What would she have given for the elevator to have broken, trapping her between the second and third floor, for as long as it took for Konoha to forget about her.

With a soft 'ping' the control panel lit up, signifying someone on another floor had pressed the call button, and the doors began to slide shut again with a sigh.

Oh, what the hell was she daydreaming for? Sakura's hand flashed out to stop the doors from closing on her, and stepped out onto the red carpet of the hallway. It seemed simple enough; one step after another, the same way she'd been doing all her life. Why was it so hard? Why did her leaf green heels feel like they were made of cement and lead, so that each step was a fighting effort to lift her foot? Why did her white sequenced dress feel like it was instead sewn with heavy coins? How was she still finding the power to move forward at all?

There was no other choice.

Sakura stopped outside the door of room 201 and knocked before she chickened out and had to spend another few agonising moments trying to work up the courage to do so. Hesitation was useless. It only prolonged the ugliness.

"It's open."

As it always was, but every time she wished by some miracle it was locked and he was too deaf to hear her knock. She pushed on the handle and entered. The air was uncomfortably warm and wet, so at least he'd showered beforehand this time, though the offensive stench of over-strong cologne and aftershave stung her nose. She already felt sick, but that was probably nerves more than anything. All she'd eaten today were two breath mints and half a bottle of soda. Kakashi had chided her, but a dread that had been deepening all day did nothing for appetite.

The room was empty. Was he still in the en-suite? He'd already put on the 'mood-enhancing' music on the old record player in the corner, although what exactly one was supposed to find relaxing and sensual about shrill opera was beyond Sakura. Just the sound of the soprano wailing set her teeth on edge, which was funny, since before she came to Otafuku Gai she'd never minded opera in the slightest. Now she just wanted to start smashing things the moment she heard the first warbling bars of an aria.

She moved to the window and ran a hand along the edge of the curtain, tempted to slide it shut. Somewhere in the inky blackness out there was a camera, and it was pointing directly at her. She'd tried closing the curtains once before, but the hell she'd caught off her teammates – including Kakashi – had hardly made it worth it. Her teammates needed to keep an eye on her. If it was just for the perverts, she wouldn't give a damn, but Kakashi would just worry himself hairless if she closed the curtains in case things went wrong with Hiroshi and she needed rescuing like some pathetic damsel in distress. It mattered so very little. If her cover was blown or Hiroshi got it into his head to kill her for some other reason, she'd either have won the fight or lost it by the time anyone over in that inn reacted. There was no fooling her. She knew that she was on her own.

Behind her, the door to the en-suite opened and Hiroshi emerged with a towel around his waist. She met his gaze in the reflection of the window and he smiled. Or rather, he smirked.

"My sweet Sakura, aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"

It was only with absolute reluctance that Sakura had ever agreed to give her real name to this man, and she'd grown to loathe the sound of it on his tongue. When he moaned that name while he grunted and sweated against her, it was all she could do not to claw his eyes out.

Her chaperones insisted that she had to present her real identity to Hiroshi, for if any deception was discovered, the village could be thrown into jeopardy. They wanted to be sure that if and when the Cloud village (or any other village they were stealing from) noticed one of their highly exclusive bloodlines had taken root in Konoha in the years to come, they would only have the irresponsibility of their own nin to blame for going to bed with kunoichi they knew were foreign. You could go to war over a deception to steal bloodlines, but not personal infidelities.

Perhaps what was worse was that it was fashionable for prostitutes in Otafuku Gai to take on flower-themed 'professional' names. There had to be hundreds of Sakuras walking the streets in this town, and Hiroshi seemed to have done business with several. So much so that with the way he treated her she sometimes wondered if he remembered she'd agreed to be his lover, not just another flower-named whore.

He came to stand behind her, close enough for her to feel the heat of his body through her clothes. His hands clasped her upper arms and turned her. They were only wet from the shower, but to Sakura they felt like slime, and she had to strongly clamp down on the urge to shudder.

"How is the family, Hiroshi?" she asked evenly. It had been over a week since she'd last seen him, and while Sakura had enjoyed sending Kakashi out to buy tampons, Hiroshi had returned to his village.

"Is that a note of bitterness I hear?" wondered Hiroshi, soothing the backs of his fingers across her cheek. She wished he wouldn't. It took a lot of make-up and effort to bring colour to the pale slab that was her face, and she didn't appreciate him messing her hard work up. "You know you're the only woman I love."

Sakura shrugged ever so slightly, not caring in the slightest if this was a lie he told to all his mistresses. The only one she felt sorry for was the man's wife. "I understand our arrangement."

"Then why do you look so sad, my flower?" Hiroshi's breath rolled across her face. Sakura held hers. "Why don't you smile for me?"

The corner of Sakura's mouth twitched into something that would have baffled facial expression experts everywhere. Here was a smile, the might say, yet here was also irritation, disgust, anger, fear. Despair. Hiroshi always seemed blind to whatever he did not want to see. He saw Sakura's smile and gave his own self-satisfied sneer. His slick fingers coiled around her jaw, just a fraction too tightly, forcing her head up, and his thumb smeared against her lips. There went her lipstick. "It's been a while, my love."

"How do you want it today, Hiroshi?" she asked, her voice a heavy monotone she'd never heard herself use outside of this room.

"How 'bout you stop call me that for a start," he said, squeezing her chin hard. "You know what I like."

She hesitated. A cold jolt of nausea lurched in her stomach, but there was nothing she could do about it. "Yes, daddy."

Heavy lust clouded his eyes with just that one word alone. She swallowed her revulsion and stepped back against the window as he stepped forward. He didn't appear to notice her instinctive recoil. He only grabbed her tighter around the face, holding it up to stare down at her with heavy-lidded eyes. "How's my precious angel?" he murmured. "Have you been good while I've been away? I bought you a gift."

Sakura suppressed a deep sigh. Now she would have to work even hard to manufacture a convincing display of gratitude that would satisfy his ego. It at least gave her a tiny moment to breathe freely when he moved away and pulled something from his bag by the bed: a velvet box. More generic jewellery.

"I think it matches your eyes beautifully," he said, except this opal necklace was blue, not green. Sakura stared at it listlessly for a moment before forcing herself to smile. She had no idea where she drew the strength on to thank him and tilt her head forward so he could fix it around her neck like a shackled collar.

"It would look better on you without all 'this'," Hiroshi said. By 'this' he must have meant her clothes, for in the next moment he had shoved the dress straps off her shoulder, pushing the garment to her waist. Sakura stiffened fractionally. Oddly, she was more concerned about the window behind her than she was about Hiroshi's greedy little eyes sweeping her breasts.

"Lovely," he muttered, stepping against her once more. His mouth was too close. The stink of his breath was threatening to make her wretch. "No kisses," she reminded him, more tersely than a man might want from a woman he'd just given an expensive gift.

A little resentment crept into his lust-filled expression. His lip curled. Suddenly Sakura was thrust around to face the window and squashed between it and his body. "For someone so cheap," he chided her, "you sure are an uptight little bitch."

He grabbed her exposed her breast with his rough, squeezing fingers, while his other hand plunged beneath the skirt of her dress to rip down her underwear. He didn't care that his nails scratched deep lines down her thigh. In fact, he probably intended to do that.

"Not by the window," she gasped out, "please."

And perhaps because she'd made it clear that she didn't want to do it by the window, he became all the more convinced this was the right place. When she tried to move, he grabbed the back of her neck and slammed her forward against the glass. Her forehead smacked against the windowpane with a crack, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to break anything. "You've been naughty," he grunted. "Be good and take Daddy's punishment like a big girl."

At least, she thought, it would be over soon.

* * *

Jin was rubbing himself through his pants again, and Kakashi was trying hard not to notice and keep his mind on the papers spread out on the floor before him. The Hokage had put him through some extremely unpleasant business on this mission, yet sitting in a dark room with two animals was strangely the least of his worries right then.

"Where's the medical records for Suda?" Kakashi asked, flipping through papers detailing their target.

"Couldn't bring everything with us," Ari said. He was adjusting the focus on the camera while Jin leaned on the windowsill with his binoculars.

"Please tell me you at least remember what was on it?" Kakashi sighed.

"Why? There wasn't anything important on there."

"We're on a eugenics mission," Kakashi pointed out. "I'd think the health and fertility of the man in question were pretty damn important."

Ari looked at him with a scowl. "Let me guess – Sakura told you Suda's sterile, and you're dangling from the bait like a guppy. Get over it. She was lying."

Kakashi slapped the papers down onto the floor again. "How do you know if you don't have the medical records?"

"Because while you, the po-faced asshole you are, might presume your teammates can't tie their own shoelaces without supervision, we do actually know how to do our jobs. The medical records were the first thing the Hokage looked at. Hiroshi's fertility is better than average, and that was one of the reasons why he was picked. His count was ninety million, and that's probably higher than the three of us combined."

"Speak for yourself," Jin rebuked swiftly. "Mine's fifty mill."

"Seventy mill," Ari said just as quickly.

They both glanced at Kakashi,

"One hundred and ninety million," he supplied

"Fuck off," Ari snapped. "At least make it realistic if you're going to lie. And anyway, it's not the number that counts, it's how they move."

Kakashi shrugged, not caring for the almost literal dick-measuring competition. "How old were these medical records?"

"Six months old. There is _nothing_ wrong with that man. How many subjects have you overseen by now? Haven't you realized these whores will say anything to get out of their responsibilities?"

Kakashi didn't even know where to begin with the irrationality of that comment, although it wasn't the first of its kind. While these two ridiculed Sakura freely for being a 'whore' or a 'slut', they would acknowledge even in the same breath that she was here against her will and desperately resistant to the things they were making her do. She was damned whatever she did or felt. Which was why it felt all the more galling that when Suda Hiroshi had told her about his sterility, she'd gone to Ari first.

Perhaps it had been a lie after all…? And so what if it wasn't true? If a lie could get Sakura out of Hiroshi's grasp, it was worth supporting. Without those medical records, however, he was short on evidence.

"Something could have happened in six months," he said. "I don't think we should rule out that there's a problem with the target. It might be best to return to Konoha and-"

"And be sent right back out again," Ari sighed, turning his back on Kakashi. "She'll probably get knocked up before the end of the month and if she doesn't, she'll be reassigned anyway eventually, so why lose sleep over it?"

"And why rush to be reassigned?" Jin asked. "What if the next guy is worse? Last I heard, another name was being bandied around as a potential donor before we were sent out… Azuka Renji, from the rock village. Not bad looking, but he already beat his wife to death and three mistresses. If you told her about that guy, she might start appreciating what a gentleman Suda Hiroshi is…"

"Doesn't look like much of a gentleman to me," Ari said, the smirk all too obvious in his tone.

Kakashi couldn't stop himself. He looked through the window and immediately wished he hadn't. Even from here he could see the two figures silhouetted in the square of light from their target's hotel room, and he could not look away. The sight didn't transfix him with arousal the way it did for the other two men. Instead, nausea rolled through him thickly. How could anyone find that arousing? He was witnessing the total degradation of a close teammate; a friend.

But was turning away from the sight as good as trying to turn a blind eye to what was happening to her, selfishly, for his own comfort? For certainly whether he watched these scenes or not made no difference to Sakura and her mental or emotional wellbeing. Then again, if it made no difference, why should he torture himself?

Kakashi dragged his gaze from the monitor and started for the door. "I'll head round to meet her," he said.

"She's nowhere near finished yet," Ari said.

Kakashi didn't dignify that with a response. Hanging around a hotel entrance in the cold was infinitely preferable to lingering on in a room full of horny men who wouldn't understand empathy if it kicked them in the teeth – something Kakashi wasn't sure he would be able to refrain from doing if he stayed in that room much longer. So he headed towards the hotel, ready for when Sakura walked out, and ready to help her pick up the pieces of another night.

* * *

Even when it was over, it was never quite _over_. Hiroshi was spent and deeply relaxed as only a man could be after sex, but he wouldn't let her up just yet. She'd been dragged down to the floor after his legs had failed him, and there she crouched with the repugnant man still wrapped around her, inside her, and her fingers still gripped the window sill for dear life. She could no longer stop the shivers, though hopefully _he_ mistook them for the pleasurable quivers normally felt in the aftermath.

"My sweet Sakura, you are something special," he said, moving her hair aside so that she felt every acrid puff of his breath against the side of her neck. She tried her best not to lift her shoulder and recoil, but when his hand slid up her tensed arm toward her wrist and toward the pink and red bracelet that Kakashi had given her, she moved sharply, tucking her arm against her stomach and covering the charm bracelet with her other hand. Too obvious. She shouldn't have done that, for now she felt him pause and stiffen. She was always cool with him, but so far she'd managed to avoid physically withdrawing.

But this had been a gift from Kakashi. She couldn't let Hiroshi stain it with the same filth that he'd permanently stained her with.

"So you have another man paying you with trinkets too, huh?" he grunted. "Auditioning to be a prostitute?"

She might as well have been. She would rather he gave her money straight up instead of tasteless jewels she couldn't spend.

"But you're not like these other whores, Sakura," Hiroshi said, wrapping his hand around her throat and pressing his fingertips into her jugular just hard enough to feel a touch threatening. "All these other greedy women can come here and take everything I give them with a dirty smile because their dignity is a fair price to pay for the money. But you don't care about the money, do you? And you hold onto the tattered remains of your dignity like you do your dresses. Why do you bother, when it's beyond all repair?"

Was he talking about her dresses or her dignity?

"You're a rare find in a town like this," he went on, coiling his hand around her breast now like he had a right to it. "It's been a while since I came across a girl who would leave the prestige of the kunoichi behind to come to this rotting pit of souls, for what? To make pennies spreading your legs? Why would you do that? What is it they have on you? Are they threatening your family? Do you have debts to pay? You haven't been doing this for long because your spirit isn't broken yet, so I doubt you've had many other men. So why are you here, Sakura? My sweet Cherry."

This was too close to the truth for Sakura's liking. Hot discomfort burned in her stomach, and she tried to get up and pull away from him. "I should go," she muttered.

He held her tight, keeping her back pinned to his chest. "I love it when they wriggle and beg and plead and scream for mercy and reprieve. But it's just an act. It's just the fashion to pretend they hate it - but with you… it's all genuine. Sakura, you can't pay for such a beautiful thing as you."

He was getting hard again. She could feel him swelling inside of her once more, and she immediately began to struggle. "I have to go," she said. "I have somewhere to be."

"Your other lover will have to wait." He pushed her flat onto the floor to quash her half-hearted struggles and rested his considerable weight on her arms, trapping her completely. He began thrusting into her, vocalizing his delight with loud, rhythmic moaning.

And Sakura froze. The great, powerful kunoichi who was perhaps the strongest kunoichi in her village, froze beneath the onslaught. She always did. On ordinary missions, she never hesitated or stalled, always reacting to threats and attacks swiftly, sometimes even before she knew what she was responding to. That was the nature of combat and training; to hone the body and mind so that fighting and defending became as close to an instinctive skills as breathing and walking – something done without thinking.

But here, now, being fucked by a powerful man from another village who reveled in her resistance, who had already deduced she was here against her will, and whose knowledge of her identity alone could herald another world war and her untimely death, she froze. Her mind went blank and all she knew how to do was endure. Just endure. Her training had never prepared her for this, and all she could think to do was do _nothing. _It would be over soon.

His thrusting grew faster and his moans reached a pitch. Sakura might have covered her ears to block him out if they hadn't been held down, but there was no getting away from those animalistic sounds, nor ignoring the dribble of his wet release inside her. She wanted to scream, and twist and convulse madly. She could wash his sweat off her skin and scrub his smell out of her clothes, but it would always be there. She would carry his taint around with her for days, and even though his sterility meant she would be trapped in this place for months… she couldn't deny that she was glad she could and would not ever conceive his child.

He eased back from her with a satisfied grunt, sated and tired at last. "You may go," he said, as if he was dismissing a servant.

Sakura didn't feel like moving. Standing and walking would exacerbate the stickiness between her legs, making her feel filthier and more used than she did already. Yet her desire to get out of there overruled every other hesitation, and she pushed herself to her feet swiftly, tugged up her underwear and smoothed down her skirt, and pushed the straps of her dress back onto her shoulders.

She stunk, she was sweaty and soiled and in dire need of washing, and normally she might have stayed on just long enough to make use of his shower before she had to face Kakashi and the rest of the team, but tonight was different. He'd disturbed her more than he had during any other visit so far and she had to leave. Now. If she didn't, she knew somehow, in some way, she would break.

"Such a rush," he chuckled at her as she jerked on her coat and picked up her bag. "You know how to make a man feel special."

"Get lost," she whispered acidly beneath her breath. She was already marching toward the door before she'd gotten her shoes on properly.

"You'll be back," he called after her.

The door crashed in her wake and she turned to rush for the elevator at the end of the hallway. Why did it feel like she was running? Why did she feel like she _needed_ to run? Hiroshi had never come after her before and he didn't where to find her once she left this building, so why did she fell so hunted?

She'd always thought he was as creepy as they came, but until now she'd at least assumed that she shouldn't hate him just because he'd had the misfortune of being selected by the Hokage for his eugenics program. He thought she was a willing mistress. Or at least, that was what Sakura thought. She couldn't blame him for the things he did to her when he didn't know she had no choice in the matter… but he did know. He liked it. Suddenly the things he'd done to her… the things he _would_ _do_ to her…

Sakura would sooner die.

The light above the elevator lit up before she could reach out to press the button. Someone was already coming up, and instinct screamed it was Kakashi. He always came to pick her up, and while facing him was always a little wearisome after another night with Hiroshi, this time everything inside her retreated from the thought of seeing him. She hadn't showered – she stank – she _looked_ as bad as she felt… and how much further did she have left to fall in his eyes?

She whirled around, looking for a quick escape. The other elevator was already waiting, and she punched the button to open the door and leapt inside. The doors began to sigh shut, just as she heard Kakashi's elevator begin to open… and then he was too late; the elevator was moving down and, for now at least, she was safe.

In the foyer, she crossed to the entrance, holding her coat tightly closed over her ruined dress. In the street outside, the wind was cold and biting, but rarely did that ever seem to deter festivities. A crowd of drunken businessmen stampeded past, and Sakura waited until the street was clear before stepping out.

Of course, her instincts had been known to be wrong.

"Sakura?"

Panic and shame slammed through her in equal measures. She jerked guiltily towards the man who'd been standing in a tiny little quad beside the hotel entrance, sheltered from the window. Kakashi had never been in that elevator. He'd been down here all along.

"Kakashi-sensei?" she responded hoarsely, subconsciously skittering back a few steps as he approached her. "I wasn't expecting you to – I mean – never mind."

He looked at her curiously, most likely confused by her odd manner. Then his gaze trailed over her, from head to toe and back again, so quick that most people would have missed it, but not Sakura. She knew little could fool Kakashi's cutting senses and his criminal sense of smell had been why she'd always been so careful to shower before meeting him. If she could smell the stink of sex and sweat and semen on herself, of course he could.

Yet, as always, if Kakashi thought or knew anything untoward, he didn't show it. "Alright?" he asked her lightly, the same as he did any other night.

She nodded.

"That's new," he commented, looking at her throat.

Sakura's hands flew up, wondering if Hiroshi had left bruises when he'd grabbed her around the neck… but no. Kakashi had only seen the opal necklace. She pulled a face and snapped it off. As broken links rained down on the paving at her feet, she slapped the opal pendent into Kakashi's hand. "Here. Fence it and buy something interesting."

He slipped the broken necklace into his pocket like a magician vanishing a coin. She wouldn't see it again. "Do you want to go back to the inn?" he asked.

She nodded again. There would be a shower there, even if the chance of running into their teammates was strong. Once again, the numbed apathy that would have her wallowing in her own self-pity and filth was overcome by Kakashi's presence. She wanted to be clean – _for him._ She hated that he had to see her this way.

Almost as much as she hated that he didn't seem to care how far she'd been felled. Even now, as they walked back to the inn, he rested his hand lightly on her shoulder, arm around her back, as if she didn't smell like a foul, trussed up whore. She could have pushed him away. But making a fuss now would just create an even bigger fuss that she didn't have the energy to start or deal with.

Up the rickety staircase of the inn, they both cast furtive looks down the tunnel of corridor to the room Kakashi shared with the two idiots, and judging from the quiet and the darkness at that end of the floor, it was safe to say they'd already left for their obligatory night of touring the cat houses of the cheapest district. Sakura's emotions were already too frayed and disorderly to feel relieved they were gone, though she heard Kakashi sigh in what was probably relief. They headed for the bathroom shared by all the floor's residents. It was always damp and smelled of mildew, and Sakura had never stepped into it when the floor wasn't soaked with water and the mirror wasn't steamed and flecked with all kinds of hazardous materials.

"Have your shower," Kakashi told her. "I'll find you a towel."

And then he left her. Sakura took a deep lungful of warm, moist air and probably numerous mould spores too, and sat down, fully clothed on the wooden showering stool that was still damp from the last naked ass to use it. With Kakashi gone, she felt a little better… a little freer. But now all she wanted to do was sit here and cry.

It was only the knowledge that Kakashi would be back and fully expecting to hear the sound of a shower going that moved her to start stripping off her soiled clothing and clicking the old water heater into life. Water poured over her head. It drummed against her face and her breast and when she looked down at the water swirling away across the tiled floor to the drain, she expected it to be filthy… yellow, black, puss white…

Instead she saw only a streak of red.

For a heartbeat, she quite calmly assumed she was imagining things. The trained professional kicked in before she did, realizing she was bleeding and hunting down the source.

It was her nose

Sakura had never had a nosebleed in her life that hadn't been caused by anything less than a punch directly to the face when it was unavoidable. She simply didn't get them otherwise. But tonight she didn't think anything had touched her nose at all...

Now the medic in her slowly awakened from the hibernation it had been put in since the start of this ludicrous mission. She knew her body better than she knew _any_ body, living or dead, and she knew when something wasn't right. A spontaneous nosebleed might not have been cause for concern in anyone else, but this was the first she'd had in her entire life and for it to occur now of all times…?

Sakura sent a little probing chakra along the veins in her nasal passages and sealed the bleed far more effectively than pinching her nose and tilting her head back. And then she kept on probing, looking for the real cause – the _weakness_ that had caused such an innocuous rupture.

She found it in her very blood and the muscle of her heart. It was damaged.

The tiny tears were barely perceptible, and if Sakura had been a lesser medic or not so familiar with her own body, she would have overlooked it. She could fix it in an instant, but what shook her was that this wasn't a symptom of sickness or disease. She had had a perfectly fit heart when she'd woken up that morning, and all that had happened been then and now had been an encounter with a powerful shinobi who could, with the sound of his voice alone, destroy internal organs.

The deafening hiss of the water hitting the tiles was interrupted by a soft knock at the door. "I'm leaving your towels and your night robe out here," she heard Kakashi say on the other side.

Sakura didn't take in a word. Her heart was thundering in her ears with the implication of what she'd just discovered.

Once sufficiently scrubbed to at least fool her own nose that she smelled like herself again, she dressed in the sleeping yukata Kakashi had left and padded back to her room to find him sitting on the ledge of the open window. With the inn being so old, the windows in these guest rooms didn't have glass, and to look outside one needed to push open a wooden shutter. Aside from a dim, scuffed lamp standing in the corner of the room, it was only from this window and the dazzling illuminations in street below that her room had any light whatsoever.

When she entered, Kakashi closed it, and the room suddenly plunged into a cozy orange glow, courtesy of the one valiant lamp. "Do you feel tired? I can go if you want to sleep."

Sakura shook her head silently and moved to sit on her futon. He'd folded back the covers for her, and the sheets were fresh. He must have changed them while she'd washed, and a painful twinge of gratitude caught in her chest and made it hard to breathe. How absurd, that after all she'd suffered through in the past few weeks, it was Kakashi's gesture of making her bed that brought her the closest she'd gotten so far to tears.

But Sakura had not been battling with her tumultuous emotions for so long to lose it now, and she held her face and voice as neutral as ever. "You can stay," she said softly. "I'm not really tired at all."

He seemed to know something was different tonight, but he knew better than to ask if anything was wrong, because the only answer to that was _yes. Everything_ was wrong. And since there was nothing to be done about that, neither of them brought it up. So when he spoke, he framed his words very carefully. "If it was too much," he began slowly, "we can call it off for a few days. We can tell the two idiots you've come down with something… they couldn't force you."

Sakura put on a smile, but it was agony. Was this the best they could do? Fake sickness and hope to scrounge a few days reprieve? Such pathetic, weaseling subterfuge would only go so far.

The dangerous idea that had been turning over silently in the back of her mind for some time now was again clawing its way back into her thoughts, reminding her that if she was brave enough, if she was smart enough, and if she had nothing left to lose, there was a way out of this town. It would be an incredible sacrifice in itself, but every day her other alternatives had been looking increasingly monstrous. When just the thought of living to see another night like this made her stomach twist and churn with real sickness – with real _fear_ – she knew she'd run out of alternatives.

She decided then and there, and her conviction terrified her.

"I'm not going back," she said.

Kakashi was politely confused. "Back… where?"

"To Hiroshi," she said. "I'm not going to see him again."

His frown deepened. "What are you saying?"

What _was_ she saying? She could tell him that she'd felt threatened today, more than she ever had before, and that she had her suspicions that Hiroshi was using his bloodline limit against her – not in any way to injure her significantly or even purposefully – but this risk alone should have been enough to call off the mission.

Except she knew it wouldn't be. If Sakura told the two idiots about it, they would assume she was lying again as she had no proof other than her gut feeling that Hiroshi was harming her, and then where would she be left? Even if they believed her, it would only mean reassignment to another man and the nightmare would begin all over again.

She had made her decision, and finality and sheer enormity of it burned away all the logic and rationality that had been on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill forth.

"I'm not getting out of here until I conceive," she said bleakly to Kakashi, "and we both know that isn't going to happen with Hiroshi."

"So… what? You want to abandon the mission and go on the run?" He watched her closely, and his body had gone very still. He sensed her decision was an important one, even if he didn't get it.

"Danzou has thrown so much men and money into ANBU, I don't see how I'd survive to see Friday," she said. Perhaps she was selling herself a little short… she knew she could last at least till Sunday. "I don't plan to run."

Kakashi's expression clouded over with wariness. "You can't just sit there and refuse to do the mission. You'll be taken home and tried as a dissenter," he warned. "That's probably what Danzou is hoping you'll do, so he'll have an excuse to imprison you and throw his weight around to get you hanged for treason. He's been wanting to make an example of Naruto and Tsunade's supporters ever since he assumed the title. "

"I don't plan to be made an example of either," she said, her voice nowhere near as strong as her resolve.

"Then what _are_ you planning?" he demanded.

"I'll just complete the mission. I'll conceive."

"But you just said Hiroshi-"

"There's more men than Hiroshi in this town, sensei!" she snapped. "Any number of them would be able to fulfill the requirement."

His head reared back a fraction, startled. "You know that's why Ari and Jin were assigned as escorts, don't you? They're chaperones. They're here precisely to stop that kind of 'cheating'."

He said that as if this was all a game. Sakura shrugged her shoulders loosely and raised her hands, palms out, inviting him to take a look around. "It's fortunate then, that they're the least reliable chaperones ever assigned to anyone. Where are they now?"

Right at that very moment, Jin and Ari were on the other side of Otafuku Gai, sitting in a dark bar with music so loud the topless woman couldn't hear their catcalls as she took their money and gyrated her hips for their entertainment. As chaperones went, they were particularly useless, as although they'd made some token protests at the beginning of the mission about Sakura getting her own room away from them, they'd quickly decided she was too boring to watch all the time and too dull to succeed in 'cheating'.

Now, most days, she saw very little of them, spending almost all her time out with Kakashi, just soaking in the more family friendly amusements the town had to offer or just hanging around in the solitary privacy of her own room. She'd already had plenty of opportunities to subvert the mission directive, and no doubt she would have many more.

Kakashi, however, did not seem at all taken with her plan. "I don't think this is feasible," he said plainly. "If you're caught, you can kiss freedom goodbye, and whoever you enlist to help you cannot be informed of what you're after or else he become a liability, but a lack of discretion on his part could be an even bigger liability. So, what, are you just going to pick up men off the street? Take them home and have as much unprotected sex as possible until you're pregnant? This is Otafuku Gai – half the men in this town have some sort of venereal disease. I couldn't imagine anything more risky than-"

"I wouldn't, even if I could," Sakura interrupted loudly, her stomach rapidly sinking at his blunt condemnation. "I'm not someone who can just go up to strangers and ask for sex so casually and easily as that." She bit off the urge to add "like you", though the image of the voluptuous Madam Wisteria with the beautiful, smiling face was lodged in her mind, along with the imagined picture of a younger Kakashi on her doorstep with that fistful of money. Perhaps it hadn't been like that, and it wasn't fair to accuse him of being easy. All she knew was that she would never have the guts to approach a prostitute, even the male ones.

And if she couldn't do that, she knew trying to pick up a random man to help her conceive would be next to impossible. After Hiroshi, she felt a little more wary of soliciting sex from men she knew nothing about, if she hadn't already been wary enough.

"I need someone," she began slowly, her fingers beginning to tremble unseen in her lap, "who knows the risks and understands the need for discretion. I need someone I can trust."

Kakashi had always been such an intelligent man. And right now the arms that he had folded across his chest like a barrier against her dropped and he stared at her in amazement. Sakura couldn't meet his eye; she was too ashamed. The moment the words had left her mouth she knew she'd gone too far.

"No," he said, one syllable which betrayed his disgust.

"You said I only had to ask, and you'd help me with any-"

"Not that. Not ever," he said shortly. "How could you ever ask me that?"

It was too late now to take back the words and lock them away behind the cage of her teeth. She'd summoned the courage to say them at least and even if he rebuked her so quickly and harshly, she knew she had to go on. "I can't get out of here until I conceive," she pleaded. "How else am I supposed to-"

"You're tired and you're upset," he interrupted. "You're not thinking clearly or you'd realize what a… it's not happening, Sakura. Just get some rest and tomorrow we'll forget about this."

Icy anger seared her nerves at his flat refusal to even contemplate her request, and she jerked her eyes up to see him glaring back. "You seemed ready to die with me not so long ago," she pointed out, "yet you won't-"

"This is very different!"he protested. "Dying is easy, but…"

He let that despicable sentence hang, so Sakura clenched her jaw and finished it for him. "Sleeping with me is worse than death."

"It's not just about that – if it was -?" He cut himself off. "This is a child we're talking about. You can't just expect someone to make such a huge commitment from nothing. That's… that's…"

That was exactly what was expected of Sakura. She didn't have to point it out, because he too was realizing belatedly how churlish it was to object when she had never had a choice in the matter. Sakura, however, was not like Danzou. She wouldn't force the issue, even if it was within her power.

All she could do was ask. "Please. I don't know what else to do," she said, and her voice was one shade shy of begging. "Just listen-"

"Not now. In the morning…" Kakashi turned away, pacing along the short length of the room awkwardly like he didn't know what to with his body anymore. He wouldn't consider it. Not even for a second. "Get some rest," he said with dreary finality; the conversation was over and his hand was on the door. "You'll feel more yourself in the morning."

Without giving her another chance to respond, he slipped through the door like a ghost, vanishing silently and so quickly into darkness that she wondered if he'd ever been there at all. Then all she could hear was the pounding of some musical baseline in a bar across the street. Or was that the throb of her heart in her ears?

He'd run away from her. He was the only person keeping her sane in this hellhole, and in one minute she'd alienated him completely. Of course he would never do that… it was just too much to ask someone to sacrifice.

Just too much…

Sakura slowly lifted her hands and pressed them firmly over her ears until all she could hear was the low, reassuring thrum of nothingness, as if she was sitting on the edge of a void so big and empty she could hide there forever if she chose. Out of reach of Hiroshi. Out of sight the two idiots. Hidden from Kakashi's disgust and shock that she would ever suggest he give her a child and an easy way out.

Slowly, she lowered her hands to stare at the intersected lines on her palm that were said to mark out one's future, and detail the life one would lead. But for some time now, her heart, fate, and life lines had been obliterated by stretched looking scar tissue. Whatever her palms had once shown was long forgotten, but she remembered many occasions as a child when she'd sat in the wild flower meadows with Ino during their kunoichi classes, and they had interpreted their palms according to no particular authority other than whim. Sakura had simply seen only what she'd wanted to see – that she would live a long time, be disgustingly successful, and that she would marry a handsome man and have three children.

She had given up such romanticized, idealistic nonsense many years ago, but she had always assumed that she would at least be happy, and that the choices which affected her life would always be hers to make. But now, she realized a little numbly, she had given up entirely. There were no more illusions of a handsome husband to give her beautiful children in a quaint home behind some kind of picket fence. She acted now merely to survive. A child was a tool; a male partner, a necessary evil.

It was the only way to wrest back control of her life. She would not give Danzou what he wanted – neither a genetically idealized child, nor an excuse to sign her death warrant. If Kakashi wasn't willing to help her after all his promises to walk on red-hot coals for her, she would just have to find someone else. He wasn't the only man who could aid her, and she didn't need his approval or permission to seek someone else out either.

Despite her self-reassurances, a little despair crept back in – for what kind of sorry state was she in that she could be reassured by these thoughts? Kakashi had been her best hope, not because he was the best male specimen available, but because he was safe. He was trusted.

He was her friend.

But perhaps… this had been taken from her too?

* * *

TBC


	6. Embers

**Scarlet Scroll**

Embers

* * *

Kakashi didn't sleep much that night, but he rarely did. Usually he was woken up by the two idiots who stumbled in at around four or five in the morning to fill the room with a boozy stench and colossal snores that kept even the neighbouring guests awake. But Kakashi's insomnia that night had another cause entirely.

Sakura had asked him to father a child with her.

She wasn't thinking clearly, obviously, or she never would have suggested it. She would have to be pretty desperate to...

But, of course, she _was_ desperate. Kakashi had witnessed how she'd slowly been ground down over the passing days and weeks. That was why he'd been throwing himself so devotedly into finding something fun and interesting to do each day so she never lost that cheeky, carefree smile that was becoming an increasingly rare sight. Each day it seemed a little harder for her to forget herself and join in the fun he showed her – whether it was at theatres, pubs, karaoke clubs, buffet bars, bathhouses, or massage parlours. Did she know how much effort it took to find places like these that didn't involve strippers and 'happy endings'? One day soon he feared with a palpability that squeezed the heart in his chest that she would fall completely and irrevocably into despair, and there would be nothing he or anyone could do to repair the damage that this mission had done to her.

To have been so desperate that she asked him for help this way... Kakashi was scared she had already passed the point of no return.

He'd already thought of the option of arranging for someone else other than Hiroshi to give her a child, but he'd discounted it long ago. It seemed like it would only add to Sakura's misery, to share her body out to even more men when just one was enough to kill her spirit, not to mention how risky it would be if she was caught, and just how generally dangerous it was to have unprotected sex with men who they couldn't give a thorough background check.

But perhaps that had been his own selfish view? He'd thought such a proposal would be too much for Sakura to handle, that however difficult it was to keep returning to Hiroshi, it would be worse to start whoring herself out to multiple men just to get the mission over with sooner.

What if that was _exactly_ what she needed? Would she be better off getting the mission over and done with as quickly as possible, however risky the stunt, instead of playing it safe and waiting to be reassigned in a few months time?

Ultimately he had to trust Sakura's own judgement, and by the time soft morning light was streaming through the shutters of the window he was lying beneath, he'd resolved some of the shocked confusion he'd taken to bed with him. True to his word, he would discuss it with Sakura this morning and they would come to an arrangement that best suited her.

It would not, however, be him.

As the first up at the ungodly hour of six o'clock, when the most hardcore revellers were only just beginning to stumble home through the streets, Kakashi went to the inn's bathroom to perform his daily ablutions, then headed down to the tea shop around the block to scrounge a copy of yesterday's paper from the owner and have something resembling liquid adrenalin in a tea cup to stave off the fatigue from the long, wakeful night. In a few hours, Sakura would appear, as she always did, and then they would talk.

But Sakura didn't come. Kakashi was beginning to resign himself to the possibility that he would have to go back and knock on her door when he saw Jin and Ari coming down the sloping street towards him. Kakashi pretended not to notice that they were heading towards him with purpose in their stride, and that could never bode well. As he sipped his tea and forced his eyes to follow the words on his paper, his mind raced.

Jin stopped short beside him, blocking out the sun. "Where is she?" he demanded.

Which meant Sakura wasn't in her room at all. She had disappeared.

Without missing a beat, Kakashi said quite blandly, "She's having a bath, I imagine."

"We checked the bathroom," snapped Ari. "Where is she? You're supposed to be keeping an eye on her."

"Gentlemen, please take note that there are fifty-six bathhouses in this town," he sighed. "Sakura is at the Jasmine Court. I took her there myself this morning."

The lie was seamless, but Jin still looked incredulous. "And you just left her there? Unsupervised?"

"It's a women-only bathhouse. I figured she was safe from being impregnated for an hour or so," Kakashi said dryly, setting his tea cup down. "You're welcome to pick her up. I said I'd meet up with her but since you're obviously worried-"

"No," said Jin, rather predictably, who didn't want to be stuck with a glum girl cramping his style. Neither would admit it, but the two men were almost grateful that Kakashi was doing most of the 'babysitting'. "Just keep her out of trouble."

He gestured at Ari and the two men slunk off, heading only god knew where to do only god knew what. Kakashi wasn't interested in their day's plans... he just waited until both men were safely out of sight around the corner before jumping out of his seat and racing back to the inn.

Sakura really was gone. Kakashi scanned her room and noted the duvet on the futon had been turned back neatly. Her clothes were in order, her bags were still there. She wouldn't have done a runner without those at least... unless she'd been smart and picked up new supplies so no one would notice her missing gear.

He strode up to her wardrobe and jerked a random dress off its hanger. A moment later when Pakkun appeared, he held it out to the dog. "Find Sakura," he said. "This is an emergency."

Without a word, the dog scampered off on her most recent trail.

She couldn't have gotten far. Kakashi had _checked_ on her that very morning, stopping outside her door on the way to the teahouse to peer through an old tear in the shoji door to make sure... well, he wasn't sure what he'd been trying to find out. If she was still there? Still alive? Still sitting with that haunted look he'd left her with last night? Maybe he'd just been seeking reassurance in the sight of her curled beneath her covers, asleep and untroubled for once.

But what if that had been a trick? What if she'd taken his rejection last night to heart and decided she wouldn't rely on his help _at all_.

The quiet streets opened up before him as he followed Pakkun's stumpy tail through piss-soaked alleys and bleached concrete plateaus. Occasionally the dog's little legs would slow at busy junctions, but never once did he lose the scent, and Kakashi didn't have to suffer too many heart palpitations before his little legs went scampering off decisively in a new direction.

If Sakura had left the town, this was a rather roundabout route. He began to doubt his initial fears when it became evident that Sakura's trail led to the heart of the town and meandered back and forth across the streets, as if she had been in no particular rush. Yet this introduced a new fear? Why was she wandering the streets alone so early in the morning without telling him? A lack of explanation for such strange behaviour was just as worrying.

Finally, Pakkun trailed to a stop, snuffling his way to a white-painted doorway. "She's in there," he said with finality.

Kakashi looked up. The windows of this shop were lined with headless mannequins of fashionably slim angles, demonstrating clothing that was too fancy to pass for casual, but far cheaper than the clothing stores on the next street over. This was the very shop he had come to several times with Sakura to stock her wardrobe. What the hell was she doing here?

"Are you sure?" he asked the dog.

"Definitely," Pakkun said. "I'd go in there, but there's that sign…" His sad, inky eyes turned to the poster tacked to the door which said, 'No Dogs.'

Kakashi didn't care. He dismissed his summon and stepped into the shop, his sharp gaze scanning the length and breadth of the room, looking for that head of distinctive hair. A few women could be seen – truly dedicated shoppers to be here so soon after the doors had opened, but Kakashi saw nothing pink that wasn't part of some display.

The shop assistant spotted him and made her way over. Perhaps it was because he was clearly not here for dresses, or because she remembered him from previous visits, she already knew what he was after. "If you're looking for the pink-haired lady," she said, "she's in the changing rooms."

Oh, thank god. Kakashi released a tense sigh he hadn't known he'd been holding in, softly thanked the woman and headed towards the archway at the back of the store that led to a short corridor of curtained booths.

"Sakura?" he called out gently, spotting the one booth whose curtains were pulled shut. "You there?"

No answer. He approached the curtain warily, knowing that if he was about to walk in on some middle-aged woman in her underwear, he was bound for a slap. Never mind that – if this was Sakura, he could be punched through the wall.

With great bravery, he slipped his hand behind the curtain and eased it aside, giving anyone on the other side ample time to react and shriek if he'd made a mistake. But he heard not a peep, until the rings on the curtain pole clacked together and he was presented with the sight of his teammate sitting on the bench inside, staring sideways at her reflection. The only acknowledgement of his presence was when her gaze flicked briefly to meet his through the mirror, before turning back on herself. Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor. The cheap, white dress she wore had a price tag sticking out beneath her arm.

Kakashi hadn't known what to expect when he'd found her. It certainly wasn't this, and suddenly his concern for her was joined by the memory of their last conversation, and he didn't know what to say.

"You shouldn't go off like that on your own," he scolded quietly. "Jin and Ari were suspicious."

"I needed a new dress," she explained steadily.

Kakashi didn't know why. She had more outfits back at the inn than he'd had in his entire life. "Then you should have said-"

"Why? What does it matter?" Her hand dropped limply against the crisp skirts of her borrowed dress. "I just wanted a new dress. There's no need for a drama."

"I didn't know where you'd gone," he said reproachfully. "I thought…"

Her head rolled back, hitting the wall of her booth with a hollow thud. "You thought I'd gone off to find an easy lay since you turned me down?"

He shifted uneasily. "I thought you'd run away," he said.

Dull green eyes darted to him once more, then away. "Shows what you know. Should have assumed I was trying to get lucky."

"Seems you were shopping for dresses."

"What do you think the new dress is for?" she asked, woodenly spreading the pleated skirts. "But I'm such an idiot. Where do I even start looking for a guy, and how am I supposed to open _that_ conversation? The more I think about it, the more I just want to do nothing... just sit here... I don't think I can leave."

"You can't sit in here forever," he pointed out, reaching to grasp her elbow and encourage her to stand. But Sakura flinched her arm away from him the moment his fingers brushed her bare skin.

"Don't act like you care," snapped sullenly, gaze fixed resolutely on the opposite wall, even as her vision began to swim with tears. "You play nice and you take me to shows and force me into stupid dances, but you don't really understand. You promised me I could talk to you and you'd do anything I asked, but the first thing I ever ask of you, you throw your promise back at my face. You make me feel like a stupid child! Do you know how humiliating it was to ask you?"

Kakashi had been hoping to talk it over with her, but he had not planned on this kind of setting. If the changing room was empty except for themselves right now, that could soon change, and he didn't fancy having this conversation overheard. "Maybe we should go somewhere quieter?" he suggested.

Her jaw clenched. "Yes, fine. I can see you don't want to talk about it. Let's sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened if that makes you feel better, but I think I'll stay here if it's all the same to you." She reached out to grab the curtain, jerking it closed between them.

Kakashi swept it back open and stepped inside and before she could eject him again, he sat down on the low tuffet in front of her knees; a position that forced him to look up at her. "Ok, we can talk here," he said, stretching out his legs as best he could to try and show her he wasn't going anywhere until this was sorted. "You gave me a shock last night... you can't blame me for that. But I thought about everything you said..."

"And what have you decided?" she asked stiffly.

He sighed. "I still believe I'm not the appropriate person to... help you," he said, noting this didn't seem to surprise her. "But if you really think it's what you want, I can help you find someone else. Someone considerate, and discreet, and... _clean_."

Her eyes seemed unusually dark as they surveyed him. What did the mind behind them think of him now? Did she still believe he was hopelessly letting her down?

"If this is what you want, I'll do it," he said again. "I won't patronise you, and I think you know the risks even better than I do. But I have to be sure you want this."

"I don't have a choice," she whispered harshly. "Nothing I do here is what I 'want'. But if this is the only way to end this mission, and the only way I can get back control of my life, I'll do it. I'll do whatever it takes."

"Ok, ok." His heart felt awfully heavy as he resolved himself to the task he now faced. "I'll start looking today if you go back to the inn. You'll have to keep seeing Hiroshi in the mean time, but give or take a few days-"

Sakura was shaking her head. "No. _No._"

"No, what?" he asked, staring at her.

"I told you I'm not going back to him." She avoided his gaze, looking instead to the reflection of her dress.

"We need to keep up appearances," he said.

"I would rather die," she replied with such assurance that it frightened him a little.

Something had changed yesterday. Her grim resolve has always been a little closer to cracking each night she spent with their target, but this was such a sudden revolt that he knew there had to be something she wasn't telling him. "What happened with Hiroshi last night?" he asked. "Why are you suddenly so determined to do this?"

"Suddenly?" she repeated flatly. "I've been thinking of this for weeks. I was hoping I would be able to tolerate Hiroshi until the next client, but taking multiple partners on the side was always my contingency whether you would help me or not."

That explained nothing of why she'd suddenly decided to switch to such a contingency plan last night. "What happened?" he asked again, more softly.

Her lower lip might have trembled, but it was too brief to be sure. She'd gotten very good at controlling her emotions around him lately. "You wouldn't believe me," she breathed, her voice hoarse.

"I'm not Ari," he said. "I'm not Jin."

She took a deep breath, still refusing to look at him. "Hiroshi used his bloodline limit on me. He must have hit my heart just enough to give my hypertension. I got a nosebleed."

"A nosebleed?" He couldn't help from sounding a little incredulous. He'd had his fair share of nosebleeds in his life, and he didn't see how that translated to heart damage.

"I _know_ what he did! I don't care if you think I'm making it up or I'm hysterically paranoid, I'm _not_ going back to him. Next time he might just outright kill me!"

"I believe you," Kakashi said quickly. "You're the medic-nin, not me. I just don't understand why he'd want to hurt you."

"Why wouldn't he? He gets off on it."

His heart went out to her, and so did his hand before he even realised it. But before he could lay it on her shoulder, she brushed it away, almost casually, as if she'd expected nothing less from him. "I don't need comfort," she said, scorn narrowing her eyes. "I need to get out of here."

Kakashi sighed and sat back. "Fine," he said softly, "If you promise to go back to the inn and stop giving me panic attacks, I'll find someone."

Sakura's head dropped a fraction before she nodded. "I should be able to do this myself," she said thickly.

"Well, that's what I'm here for, isn't it?" Kakashi murmured, "because you _shouldn't _have to do this."

"Thank you, Kakashi," she whispered.

"Let's just get you back to the inn before Jin and Ari start to get any more suspicious," he said.

Sakura sighed. "Idiots."

Kakashi nodded. "Exactly."

* * *

The day had moved slowly. After her shower she had dressed in one of the dark blue sleeping yukata that the inn provided its patrons, and had sat by the window. The rest of the inn was quiet. The street outside could have passed for any of Konoha's alleys. Even the brothel opposite was in a sluggish malaise. A prostitute was sitting in one of the upstairs rooms, patiently combing the hair of a young girl, most likely her daughter. Children were known to prostitutes as an 'occupational hazard', though the one over there didn't appear to be an unwelcome one. The way the woman touched and stroked the child's hair reminded Sakura of the days when her own mother had groomed her.

Somehow, Sakura doubted she would be able to show affection for the child she planned to have, whoever Kakashi found to father it. She doubted she would hold affection for anyone ever again. Right now her heart felt like a heavy, starved lump in her chest that laboured with every beat. What did it work for? What did she have to live for? Perhaps once there had been a thin hope that danced like a little light on the horizon, that Danzou couldn't live forever, and that it was only a matter of time before Naruto began to move and rally support and take back the village that had been stolen by radicals. She couldn't even see that hope anymore. How could she look to the future when just the thought of the coming night made her hands shake and sweat with anxiety?

The door scraped open behind her. Sakura turned guardedly, expecting Kakashi to have arrived with news of some nubile young man who would be willing to fuck her without questions. She didn't think she would have been happy to receive such news, but receiving Jin and Ari was far worse.

"What are you lazing around for?" Jin asked, his mask doing nothing to disguise the way his gaze critically swept her yukata. "You should be getting ready."

When Kakashi wasn't here, these two were incredibly difficult to deal with. Sakura had learnt the best way to deflect attention was to ignore them, and make herself small and unassuming. Without a reaction, they bored easily. Rather than meet their eyes she turned her gaze out the window and gave a stiff-shouldered shrug.

"That wasn't a suggestion," Ari said slowly, like she was simple. "Suda Hiroshi expects you tonight. Get dressed."

"I'm not going," Sakura said flatly.

"What did you say?" Jin barked.

Sakura didn't repeat herself. They'd heard her perfectly well, but when Sakura didn't respond, Jin crossed the room in four strides and grabbed her arm hard enough to pull her from the window. "You don't get to decide when and where you do it, slut." His mask loomed close to her face, eerie, white, and smiling. The pale eyes behind it were quite different. "Don't give me that shit about being on your period again. You used that excuse last week."

Sakura's went cold with fury, contempt twisting her mouth down. "What happened to all that fabled Root training, huh?" she hissed. "You have no more control of your emotions of your temper than a five year-old. This is Danzou's great division, is it? His standards must have dropped pretty sharply the day they thought you two qualified-"

Jin's hand cracked across her face. It stung, and coppery blood seeped across her tongue, but Sakura felt satisfaction like she hadn't felt in a long time. Perhaps he didn't know it, but if she'd slapped him, his head would be embedded in the far wall.

"Easy, Jin," said Ari. "We're not allowed to mess her up."

"As long as it doesn't show, who cares?" Jin retorted, grabbing her by the front of her yukata to slam her back to the floor. "How else will a treasonous bitch know her place?"

"Treason?" she spat, blood flecking her chin. "You people are destroying Konoha and you talk about _treason_!"

"Listen to yourself, Sakura," cautioned Ari. He'd stepped into the room and slid the door shut behind him. "People have been executed for saying things like that."

"Then do it," she breathed, unable to stop herself. "Kill me right now before I say what I _really _think of you."

It might have all ended right there, in that small inn at Otafuku Gai, with the prostitute across the street showing her daughter how to hold a fan, and the inn's maid sweeping the staircase just metres away in the hall. Sakura knew it and accepted it, and if the final blow came right then she would have embraced it.

But Jin just laughed at her. "I have better things to sink my blade into," he jeered. "You fancy yourself as a tragic martyr, don't you? Everyone can see you're gagging for it like a little whore when you go over there. So get the fuck over yourself and _get dressed_."

"I'd rather die!" she shouted.

"That would be a real waste," said Jin, as his hand wandered over her breasts, pushing down on them and squeezing her painfully. "You're such a fresh little thing too."

"If you harm me, Danzou will have your _head_!" It was a weak threat since she didn't think Danzou cared too much about her wellbeing, only her uterus, but she would give them fair warning before she kicked seven bells out of them.

"What are you going to do? Run home and complain to the Hokage?" Jin was moved to laughter again. "We'll just tell him you're a lying little slut. Better yet, what do you think he would do if we were to tell him your dear sensei had attempted to smuggle you out of the country?"

Sakura blanched. "He hasn't. You're a liar."

"Who is he going to believe, I wonder?" Ari said loftily. "Hatake Kakashi would be hung, drawn and quartered before you could blink."

"Why would you do that?" Sakura demanded, bewildered that such unrepentant cruelty could come from anyone of Konoha.

"Why would _you_ be so selfish?" Jin rebuked. "If you refuse to do the mission, it's our neck you'll be putting on the line. And in turn... your poor sensei will suffer."

So it all came down to blackmail? Sakura grabbed Jin's hand and wrenched it off her. "You're both pathetic," she spat at them. "You're twisted."

"We have our own interests to look out for. Do your job, and we'll say no more about what Kakashi has been up to."

They had her over a barrel. If she refused to proceed with the mission, to cover their own backsides the two idiots would start accusing Kakashi of treason. Perhaps they weren't quite so idiotic as she liked to think. There was a cold, calculating kind of cruelty behind their actions. They didn't care about her, or Kakashi. They didn't even care about Danzou or this mission. First and foremost they looked out for themselves, and woe betide Sakura if she presented a bump in their cruise.

These weren't empty threats they were making, and while Sakura didn't mind risking her own life, it wasn't fair to land Kakashi in hot water for her own foibles. "Just leave Kakashi out of this," she said.

"We're all in this together," said Jin, in his utmost slimiest voice. "What'll it be?"

Sakura squeezed her eyes shut and prayed Kakashi would be back soon.

* * *

"A man?"

"Yes. I want a man."

"My, my, haven't our tastes changed," quipped Madame Wisteria. She beckoned Kakashi forward, away from the prying ears of her girls to a more private room in the back of her abode. It was as luridly decorated as any other room, but it didn't seem quite so seedy when she had to move a half-finished knitted scarf in order to sit down. "I hope you have money."

"A bit. The man's not really for me, you know," he told her.

"You know how we do business around here." Wisteria opened her palm and waggled her fingers. "Money talks first."

Kakashi had expected nothing less. With a contrived sigh, he reached into his vest pocket and produced the precious opal necklace that Sakura had thrown into his hand the previous night. The chain may have been a little damaged, but the pendant was perfect. Wisteria's naturally narrow eyes grew a little rounder. "Now where would someone on your wages find a thing like that?"

"An heirloom from my mother," Kakashi lied boldly. "It's very valuable, and not just for its sentimental value."

Wisteria cocked an eyebrow. "Alright, I shan't ask. But with this you could buy my best girl for a whole weekend."

"I'd rather have your best boy," Kakashi corrected her.

"You may be sorry to hear I only have the two. There are other places that give more variety for male pleasure, so I'm wondering why you came to me...?"

"I trust your judgment."

Wisteria made a soft throaty sound that had probably once driven her clients wild – and maybe still did. "And now I'm wondering why you would need to trust my judgement...?"

"Do you remember the girl I was with a few days ago?" he asked her.

"The little thing with strange hair?" She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Your lover, is she?"

"Just a friend. A very good friend."

"Oh, don't tell me this man is for _her!" _Wisteria tittered.

"That's why I need your judgement," he said. "I need a man who would be good for someone who could be a little timid of men."

"It would be my judgement that someone who is timid of men has no business going anywhere near male prostitutes," Wisteria said dryly. "This sounds like a recipe for disaster."

Kakashi winced, knowing how ridiculous it sounded. "The situation is a little complicated, but I assure you, this is what she wants."

"Well, it's not like I don't want the business," Wisteria sighed dramatically, looking quite appreciatively at the opal in her hand. "Haku will probably do best. He's the gentler of the two, so he'll be good to your girl."

"And... about contraceptives...?" Kakashi began awkwardly.

"What do you take me for?" Wisteria asked, as if offended he even had to ask. "All my boys and girls are as clean as a whistle, and use every kind of contraception available. No exceptions."

That hadn't exactly been what Kakashi had been hoping to hear. "No exceptions?"

"This is a dangerous town, Kakashi. No one in their right mind does business without protection. I've had countless men coming to me, swearing blind they're as clean as virgins just so they can do it raw with my girls, but how many do you think persuaded me?"

"Not many, I imagine," Kakashi sighed.

"_None_," she corrected sharply.

"Well, I guess as a contingent, do you know any clients who might suit?"

"Obviously I can't vouch for them the same way I can vouch for my boys, but there might be one or two who I would recommend to my own daughter. Whether or not they're even in town is another matter. And then there's the fact that anonymity is highly prized as part of the package I offer. If I start giving out names, I wouldn't be a particularly good businesswoman, would I?" She perched her round chin upon two fingers, looking at him pointedly. "I might lose business."

And yes, Kakashi got the point.

"That necklace is _very_ expensive," he mentioned again. "I'll have to ask for it back if you can't help me."

It disappeared very quickly down Wisteria's rather ample cleavage. She smirked at him. "No need to be so hasty. You're welcome to retrieve it, although I suppose I could spare at least _one _name."

"I'm listening."

"Although, like I said, I can't guarantee men I don't own," Wisteria repeated. "And before I tell you his name, can I at least ask why this is so very important?"

Kakashi tugged awkwardly on his ear, trying to think of a way to phrase it without giving away too much information or sounding like he was insane. "She... ah... wants a baby."

"Then she should find herself a man the old fashioned way." Wisteria seemed unimpressed.

"She doesn't want a man," he explained weakly. "I think she'd prefer not to have a man ever again after some of the things she's been through, but a child is... important. So I have to help her find a man who can be trusted with her and who'll understand the need for privacy."

Madame Wisteria nodded. "Yes, I have an old client who meets those requirements perfectly."

"What's his name?" Kakashi leaned forward. If he had to go a long way to track this man down, he would have to begin soon.

A smile split across Wisteria's face. "His name is Hatake Kakashi."

* * *

The first words out of Hiroshi's mouth when he saw her were, "I told you, you'd be back."

The gloating sneer on his face was almost too much for Sakura. She nearly turned and walked away, and it was only the threat against Kakashi and herself that forced a cold, perfunctory smile on her face as she stepped into Hiroshi's room. It wasn't anger she felt, or even fear. A genuine numbness had claimed her since she'd left the Jin and Ari at the inn, and now she wasn't sure she had even felt the rain that had pelted her face on the way over.

How was it that she'd ended up here once more, after being so certain last night that one way or another it was over? Why was it that when Hiroshi gestured for her to sit on the bed, she sat, and when dragged his fingers down her face, she couldn't feel it enough to shiver anymore?

"I'll forgive you your funny moods," he said to her, looking at her the way hunters looked at a prize catch. "I know it's a tough time for you, what with the things your village puts you through."

"Puts me though?" she echoed uncertainly.

"Isn't that why you left? Because you don't think Konoha gives you the respect you deserve." He made it sound like the indignity of being stripped of her rank and told she could no longer go on missions with her team was an offence that only existed in her head. She wondered if there was more to his comment than that. What if he actually knew about the mission she had undertaken?

"I manage," she said tersely.

His fingers slid through her hair. Sakura would happily have cut it all off if it meant he could never to it again. Better yet, she would happily cut his _fingers_ off. "You know, once upon a time, it was normal for all villages to prohibit women from their fighting forces," he said. "And I can understand with the way the modern world decays how some wish to recapture those traditional values that have been lost. A warrior's life is harsh, and a woman's life is precious."

A muscle in Sakura's jaw twitched. "You don't think I could handle the 'warrior's life'?" she asked evenly.

"I'm sure you could handle anything you put your mind to, my dear Sakura," he said, like a patronising adult to a child who wanted to fly to the moon. "But you must admit, it's never really been a good place for women."

Danzou would love to have a beer with this guy. "Well, what do you think a good place is then?" she asked heavily. "The kitchen?"

"You're a funny girl." Hiroshi snorted. "My village is at the forefront of gender equality - I'm a strong believer in equal rights."

"Yes... you're practically Neolithic," she deadpanned.

Disappointingly, Hiroshi took this as a compliment judging by the witless smirk on his face. "Thank you. Perhaps you should defect and join Kumo then?"

"And be your mistress at home _and_ away?" She found that prospect horrifying. "Would your wife like that?"

"That dumb bitch can't see past the end of her nose. We could do it right in front of her and she'd carry on fixing the tea."

Nice. "I'll have to decline," Sakura said in a steady tone. "My place is here."

"You want to where your place is?" Hiroshi asked, leaning close till his foul breath tickled her ear. "Right here, sucking my cock."

Sakura's mouth went dry, as it might right before she was about to vomit. "No, thanks," she said without thinking.

Even Hiroshi was surprised. "What did you say to me?"

Everyone seemed to be asking her to repeat herself today. The words bubbled from her mouth, unchecked, making more sense than anything else had in her life recently. "I don't think I want to be your mistress anymore. We shouldn't see each other again."

Hiroshi's hand seized her wrist, squeezing hard. "You better be joking," he hissed at her.

She regarded his whitening knuckles calmly. "I'm not joking," she said, her tone low. "So let go of me."

"You take my money and my gifts and then you spit in my face like this?" he demanded. "Get on the bed and take your panties down, and I _might_ be generous enough to forgive you your bad sense of humour."

A mild kind of hysteria which had long been raging inside Sakura's cold shell was threatening to finally break loose. Perhaps it was because she was inviting a quarrel with a man who could kill her with his voice, or perhaps it was because if she got out of this alive, her chaperones were going to report her and Kakashi to the Hokage and they'd face the death penalty. But right then, Sakura only cared about getting out, and getting out _right now. _"Go fuck yourself," she spit, beginning to stand. "I'm leaving."

"No – you – don't!" Hiroshi threw her down the bed and held her there by the throat. "How dare you talk to me like that! I was willing to tolerate you fucking other men behind my back, but you _don't_ play me! And we end things when _I _say, not you! Do you understand?"

Each sentence was punctuated by a jerk about her neck that threatened to cut off Sakura's air. "Let me up," she ground out, staring at the ceiling.

"No. You're a whore and you'll take it like a whore until I say otherwise," Hiroshi grunted as he released her wrist to reach down and unfasten his pants.

But Sakura had reached her limit. No more.

"Get off me or I'll kill you," she said.

Her threat only produced an amused snort. Hiroshi shoved her skirt up and grabbed her panties.

Sakura's chakra-charged foot connected with his ribs, and she kicked out with all her might. The hand slipped from her throat as Hiroshi flew away from her and hit the opposite wall with a teriffic crash of decorative shrapnel as ornaments fell and lamps smashed. In these traditional rooms where the rooms were divided by screens of wood and paper, when a body hit the wall, he disappeared right through it. Screams on the other side indicated it hadn't been an empty room.

Sakura shot a nervous glance at the window. The curtains were half drawn... it was possible the idiots _hadn't _just seen that. She scrambled to her feet and tugged her skirt straight as she made a beeline for the door. She saw the handle – reached for it –

A sudden pain lanced up her arm. Dimly she was aware that she'd collided with a hard, warm body, not the door, and Hiroshi had seized her wrist again. Agony radiated from his touch like a white hot blade had severed her hand. It was still there, she could see it, but it had to be broken.

"You want to die, huh?" Hiroshi was saying, through the pain roaring in her ears. "That's the only reason I can think you'd pull a stupid stunt like that. No one attack me and lives. Do you hear me? Are you listening, Sakura?"

She was listening, and as she listened a new pain was developing. Quite different from the hot pain searing her right arm, a sharp pain had started to jump in her left, like burst of electricity. Her heart felt funny, like it was caught in a vice that was steadily winding tighter. She couldn't breathe. She tried to clutch it, futilely grabbing at her clothes and clawing the impenetrable cage of ribs.

Her pulse jumped one last time. And then it stopped.

* * *

Kakashi looked around the small, dark room of the inn. Sakura's wardrobe lay heaped in the corner and her futon was folded away, but the girl herself was nowhere to be seen. Uneasily, Kakashi made his way down the corridor to the shared bathroom at the end and knocked politely on the door. "Sakura?"

"No," replied a deep baritone.

"Sorry," he mumbled, turning to head back towards his own room, his unease beginning to mount. Sakura had already pulled one disappearing act today, he didn't need another. As long as Jin and Ari didn't get back from the bars till later, he might just have time to locate her before they realised. Though what if she wasn't just hiding in a changing room down the road, this time? What if she'd changed her mind about running and was halfway to Suna?

A warning would have been nice.

When he swept into his room, the hope that Jin and Ari would still be out drinking was immediately dashed. He found the two of them, sitting by the window in their usual position, camera dangling from Jin's hand. They were both guffawing over something that had been said before Kakashi entered.

"Is that true?" Ari gasped through his laughter.

"Like a flamingo, it was." Jin wiped away tears of mirth and looked round at Kakashi. "Nice of you to join the party. Where've you been?"

"Finally caved and dipped his dick at last," Ari chuckled. "Told you. Not even Saint Kakashi can remain celibate in this place for too long."

Jin laughed. "Hah. Yeah..."

Kakashi looked between them and the window. "What are you doing?" he asked shortly. If he didn't know any better, this scene looked like every other night... but Sakura had _sworn_ she would never do it again. That she would rather die.

"What do you _think_ we're doing?" Jin's contemptuous tone slurred through his mask. "Watching our little minx get her game on."

"Sakura's over there?" he blurted, hating to betray the fact that he'd lost track of her.

"Where else?"

Kakashi snatched the camera out of Jin's eyes and sought the window of the room Suda Hiroshi rented. It hadn't been a lie. He could see them, almost out of sight, sitting on the bed with their backs to the window and conversing as far as he could tell. He dropped the camera back to Jin. "We need to pull her out. She's in danger?"

"Says who?" Ari was focusing his own pair of binoculars. "They're cuddling up like two little lovebirds."

Only if one lovebird sat as stiff as death while the other pecked and molested it. "Sakura didn't want to go over there. You _shouldn't_ have forced her."

"What makes you think we forced her?" Jin demanded. "She was dying to get over there. He must have a big cock or something."

Kakashi was a breath away from punching the masked idiot. "You're a terrible liar," Kakashi said, as someone who lied a lot himself. "And you have no idea what kind of situation you've put her in."

"She chose to do it," Jin replied staunchly. "She knows the consequences of defiance. Unlike you, she did the sensible thing. Rude nails get hammered down otherwise, don't you know?"

Kakashi clenched his fist. Absolutely ready to deck this man.

Until Ari spoke up. "Something's happening over there," he said, twiddling the dial on his binoculars.

Kakashi jerked up his hitai-ate to expose the sharingan. It snapped into focus on the window, and right then Kakashi forgot everything else. All he saw was Sakura on that bed, pinned by the throat beneath a man with a poisonous expression. He didn't need to hear what he was shouting at her. He began to move forward, about to launch himself through the open window.

Jin and Ari reacted like lightning, one blocking him while the other grabbed his arm. "Whoa, whoa – where do you think you're going?" Jin asked, staring him down.

"He's hurting her," he barked. That was all they needed to know.

"A little rough play, we've seen it before," Ari said dismissively, keeping a tight hold of Kakashi's shoulder.

Kakashi shoved him away "He's choking her!"

Neither men regarded this with any expression. He might as well have been speaking in a foreign language for how bemused they looked. "What are you here for, watching her every night, if not to protect her?" he raged. Their indifference was staggering. It had him rooted to the spot, momentarily waiting for something human to flicker behind their cold, white masks... but he was only wasting his time.

When he looked back to the window, both Sakura and Hiroshi were nowhere to be seen. "Where've they gone?" he asked aloud.

"They do it on the floor occasionally," Ari said, unconcerned.

Kakashi noticed something else. "The door's open..." He was sure it had been shut a moment ago. "I'm going over there."

Ari tried to grab him again but Kakashi had already slipped between them and dropped from the window. Jin leaned out to bellow after him. "If you jeopardise the mission, Danzou will know of it by morning! We'll be dragging your sorry carcass before him _very _soon!" He didn't seem to care who else heard him, but he wasn't bothered about giving chase either. Kakashi left him to stew, and raced through the narrow maze of alleys between buildings till he came out directly before the hotel.

The staff were loitering about the entrance again. Kakashi pushed past them and ran for the stairs, startling a smartly dressed woman on the bottom step as he charged past her. Three flights passed in the blink of an eye, and when he crashed through the doors of the third floor, he had the honour of seeing Hiroshi's profile as the man stepped into the elevator ahead. He didn't see Kakashi. Perhaps that was a good thing. Kakashi felt that later this would be regarded as a sorely missed opportunity to beat the man to a bloody snot. Sakura came first at that moment, however, and he raced on till he came to the only open door on that level.

And was immediately confronted with the sight of a small, crumpled body in the doorway.

"Sakura!" He swooped down, drawing her onto her back. Her pallid face and blue lips presented a frightening picture. He reached for a pulse but there was no life beneath his fingers. "No... not like this. You can't give up here."

Without medic-nins, shinobi like him could only rely on the old physical methods of first aid. Kakashi quickly straddled her body and began to compressed her chest in quick, short bursts, counting each push under his breath, and knew that each moment longer it took was another odd stacked against her. He tipped her chin back, ripped his mask down and blew into her lungs.

Feet thundered down the hall. "What's going on?" A hotel staffer, and another guest. "What's happened?"

Kakashi was too focused on his task to even register their arrival. He was counting each compression more loudly, as if he hoped the sound of his voice might reach her. "Don't give up, Sakura," he pleaded. "Not after all this."

"Get a doctor," a man said. More people had arrived. "Someone's collapsed."

"Is that a working girl?"

"This is Suda's room, isn't it?"

"Why's there a hole in the wall?"

They were no use to Kakashi, so he ignored them. He had to get Sakura's heart started, even though he couldn't banish the thought that he'd seen what happened to people who got in the way of Suda Hiroshi's jutsu. He'd seen the autopsy reports and the bingo book description, and knew that when the morticians opened up the bodies of his victims, there was nothing to salvage. Their hearts didn't just stop, they were torn to shreds.

And CPR would not mend a shredded heart.

"Come on, Sakura," he begged, pushing down on her chest as hard as he dared. "You're still there. I know you are."

He crouched to seal his mouth to hers once more. That was when he felt it – a weak flutter beneath his hand like a tiny, struggling bird. He paused, not sure he could believe it. The heart was beating, but not as it should. If he didn't so something quickly it would give up again.

"Sorry about this, Sakura," he whispered, ripping the glove of his right hand off with his teeth as the other tugged down the neckline of the dress to expose an expanse of bare skin between her breasts. "You can shout at me tomorrow."

The pads of his fingers splayed across her exposed flesh and began to gather a little chakra at each point of contact. This was a jutsu he'd used countless times to kill countless people, and if Sakura heard he'd used it for medical purposes she would most likely defenestrate him. He didn't even know himself if this was a sensible idea. If this killed her he would never forgive himself, and yet if he did nothing she would be dead in a matter of minutes. Possibly seconds.

He had to try.

A burst of pure electrical chakra jumped from his fingers and straight into Sakura's heart. Her body spasmed and rocked. Their small but growing band of spectators recoiled uncertainly, finally falling silent.

Kakashi felt for her pulse desperately, worried that just that small shock might have irreparably damaged her heart. He was half relieved that it was still beating, though it was an arrhythmic taboo that tapped beneath her skin. He pressed his hand to her once again and pushed another gentle shock through her heart.

This time when he slipped his fingers against her throat to feel her pulse, he found an answering thrum as steady and reassuring as his own. Kakashi closed his eyes and fell tiredly against the doorway. It was ok, he told himself. Her heart was beating again and the blue tinge was beginning to fade from her lips as her chest expanded, unaided, as she breathed once more. But his hand was still shaking against his knee. For a moment, he had really feared that he'd lost her.

Such a close brush with death almost stripped him of his own life. It had only taken moments to revive her, and yet he was now physically and emotionally fatigued as if he'd been engaged in a prolonged fight for his own life. Perhaps that was because Sakura's was just as important to him these days?

"You should get her to a hospital right away," someone said. From the way he was dressed, he looked like a bellboy.

Kakashi looked at him blankly, having almost entirely forgotten where he was. The bell-end or whatever was right, of course. Sakura needed more than his woefully inadequate care. "Yes, I'll take her," he said.

He tucked his arms underneath Sakura and gently lifted her like she was made of thin fragile glass. Her right hand sagged beneath her, mottled red and purple – probably broken. Kakashi made especially sure not to knock it as he stood and edged out though the door, past the milling band of concerned guests and staff. The elevator took them down to the foyer, where he endured double-takes and astonished stares as he carried the bedraggled girl out into the street.

Maybe it was the cold rain that pattered down on her face, for that was when Sakura finally stirred and opened her eyes sluggishly. "Kakashi..." she whispered.

"Don't talk," he ordered. "I'm taking you to the hospital."

"No... no..." Her head rolled fretfully against his shoulder. "I want to go home."

Did she mean Konoha, or...? "You want to go to the inn?" he asked.

"Please," she said quietly, her voice hoarse and dry. "Take me home..."

She was the medic-nin, so he supposed what she decided was gospel. He changed course and headed back through the alleys to the small, plain inn that had been their home for over a month now. Sakura said nothing else on the journey. Her head just sagged and rolled like she was fighting for consciousness. Kakashi quickly took her up to her room, opened the door with his foot, and laid her down as gently as he could against the rolled up futon.

Propped there, dizzy and wet and unmoving, she looked like a drowned animal. Kakashi hovered cautiously for a moment, before remembering her medical kit would be stashed with her wardrobe. He tore himself from her side to dig it out, but he was back in a flash. "What do you need?" he asked, rummaging through the contents.

"Just water," she whispered. She looked down at her arms, assessing their functionality, before pressing her left hand to her breast. The soft blue glow that lit around her fingers like tongues of a fire meant she was healing herself. Kakashi sat back on his heels, a fraction of the tenseness beginning to ease in his shoulders. If she was strong enough to perform medical jutsu on herself, she was going to be ok.

Her dead, staring eyes said otherwise. "He turned so quickly this time," she croaked. "I only wanted to leave... so I kicked him away. I don't remember what happened after that."

"If I'd gotten back sooner," Kakashi began wretchedly, but he quickly cut himself off. "Why did you go back to him after what he did last night? We knew he was getting dangerous."

Her eyes finally met his, and they were full of pity. "Jin and Ari were going to turn you in to Danzou if I didn't obey."

He gave an incredulous shake of the head. "Turn me in for what?"

"Whatever they could think of." The blue light licking at her skin began to fade, and when her hand dropped to her lap she took a deep breath as if it were her very first. "Not bad for my first heart attack."

"Will there be any lasting damage?" he asked, worried.

"I shouldn't think so," she said slowly. "The cause wasn't natural so it's easy to repair. Don't look so worried, Sensei."

A few minutes ago he'd found her on the floor of a hotel room with no pulse. Kakashi felt he had the right to look as stressed as he liked. He was about to retort as much when two pale, ghostly masked appeared in the open doorway that Kakashi had neglected to shut.

"What's going on?" Jin demanded, entering the room without permission. "What happened?"

Kakashi rose to his feet, instinctively trying to put himself between the two men and Sakura. "Hiroshi tried to kill her."

"A perfectly understandable reaction," Jin said indifferently. "She _is_ pretty annoying, and she did just fuck up our mission."

Kakashi's shoulders squared up, about to lunge.

Ari slipped between them. "A set-back," he said smoothly, "but we can work around this."

"Work around it?" Kakashi repeated disbelievingly. "Did you hear me? He just tried to kill her!"

"Says you. She looks fine to me," Jin observed.

"If he'd really wanted to kill her, she would be dead by now," Ari insisted. "Perhaps this was just a lover's tiff? With a little damage control, it's nothing that can't be fixed."

Kakashi stared at him for a moment, speechless. "You must be joking."

"We'll talk about this in the morning when everyone's a little calmer," said Ari. "There's no need for any rash decisions before we know what happened-"

"I just told you what happened-"

Jin waved him off. "And if we go home without completing the job, we have to deal with Danzou's displeasure before we all get carted off to the next target where we'll have to enjoy each other's company once again."

"Like you give a damn!" Sakura exploded, thin-lipped and stiff with pain as she clutched her wrist. Her coils of wet hair shivered around her face. "All you do is screw around with whores! You'd love it if we stayed here forever-"

Jin looked at her derisively. "The grown-ups are talking, dear."

"Don't speak to her like that – you have no idea what she's going through!" Kakashi snapped

Sakura turned her glare on him as well. "I can speak for myself!"

"We'll talk about this tomorrow," Ari repeated again. "Me and Jin will investigate what happened, and if Hiroshi is too dangerous to approach again, so be it. We'll start making preparations for the _next_ target."

Sakura didn't look angry now. She just looked ill.

"If we're done?" Kakashi asked icily, spreading his arms slightly. "You can get out now and leave her in peace."

Ari shrugged and walked out. Jin followed, a little more reluctantly, and he couldn't resist turning in the doorway to point a finger at Sakura. "And fix that bone. No one's going to touch a bird with a messed up arm."

Kakashi quite gladly slammed the door shut after him, but it wasn't nearly as satisfying as he'd hoped. A high class Kumo nin almost succeeded in killing Sakura tonight, and yet he wasn't even their biggest opponent – that honour went to their own teammates. He looked back at Sakura, still leaning heavily on the futon. She was looking irritably at her injured arm like she was debating if she should leave it as it was, just to spite Jin.

"I can take a look at it if you like," he offered.

"I've got it," she sighed, letting her blue chakra spread over the angry bruising. But even though a medic nin of her calibre was unparalleled in the medical field, not even she could mend bone fractures overnight. "It'll need a cast. There's some bandages in the medical kit."

Glad to finally be of use, Kakashi complied, bringing out the gauze and rolls of white tape. Sakura's bandaging skills put his to shame, but since she couldn't do it one handed, it was up to Kakashi to strap her wrist up. She supervised of course.

What was unnerving was that as he worked she stared at his face quite openly. He had a feeling what was on her mind, and though he wanted to avoid it, he knew she didn't deserve to be ignored. "I should have gotten back sooner."

"It's not your fault," she said, wincing as the tape wound tightly around her raw injury. "And I know I've messed things up for us. I shouldn't have attacked him."

"No one could blame you," he murmured darkly.

"Jin and Ari could."

"Idiots."

"Idiots," she sighed in agreement.

They fell into a silence, both watching the progress of the bandage. The plaster strips needed hot water, so Kakashi left momentarily to coax the ancient taps in the bathroom into giving something more than lukewarm splutters. He passed the room he shared with Jin and Ari, but it was dark and silent in there. Either they were off investigating Hiroshi or they'd gone back to another strip club. Either way, it was far easier when they weren't around, and he returned to Sakura to find she'd changed from her mussed dress into her night-robe and had tied her hair back. She looked a little better that way. Not quite like a girl who had suffered a near-fatal heart attack.

Once more she held out her arm and Kakashi diligently began to plastered her wrist. She was still prone to stare at him.

"You were gone a long time today," she said quietly.

"I'm sorry," he apologised.

"No... I mean... did you find anything?"

Here it came. With the shock of tonight's events he had almost hoped it would be pushed from her mind, especially when the news he brought was particularly unhelpful. "I went to see Madame Wisteria," he told her, speaking more to her arm than to her. "She confirmed what I suspected. Male prostitutes aren't going to be of any use to us. Most of them use protection, obviously, and the ones who don't... you're not going to want to go anywhere near them."

Sakura contemplated this calmly. "I see," she said, sounding neither disappointed nor pleased.

"Our only other option is a random man picked out from the street basically, and that's too much of an unknown, especially in places like this," he continued. "There's no guarantee of health or discretion or fertility or even temperament. I wouldn't like you to resort to that."

"It's not your decision," she said sharply. "If you don't want to help me, that's fine, but you're not going to stop me. We talked about this. I'm not going to wait around for the next target either, if that's what you're going to suggest. Do you think it's a coincidence that Hiroshi, our first target, happens to be a scumbag? Danzou must have known. The next guy he picks will be just as bad or worse. I don't care if you bring home an eighty year old man with no teeth and a record of producing the most tragically ugly offspring in the world, I would happily bear his child if it meant not giving in to Danzou."

Kakashi swallowed, his fingers fumbling with the slick, sticky plaster cast. "Well, I don't know any eighty year old men... so perhaps you'll just have to settle."

"For what?" she asked, scowling at him.

"For me."

He didn't manage to look her in the eye when he said it, though he noticed that she may have stopped breathing before she finally turned her head away with a soft sound that may have been an "oh," or a "huh."

It was acutely embarrassing for both of them, he realised. For a long time neither of them said anything more, not until Kakashi felt he'd mummified her hand with enough bandages to keep it secure and had moved to throw the milky bowl of water from the window to join the rain, regardless of who he hit. Perhaps that was what betrayed his slightly unhinged state of mind, for it really was the bowl he threw from the window, not just its contents.

Locking the shutter up, he plunged the room into darkness save for the old orange lamp. This just made the whole atmosphere worse, but right then they needed a moment to shut out the world and come to terms with this insane deal they'd struck. What they contemplated was, in no uncertain terms, treason.

Treason, however, was the least of their worries.

"Do you mean it?" Sakura said at last, fiddling with her new cast. "You're going to help me?"

"If it's what you need," he said heavily. "I said I'd do anything."

"I thought you said you would rather die."

"That's not what I said," he rebuked gently. "I thought you were asking too much, but I've had time to think and... it's just not logical to force you to take a chance on a stranger when I can help you."

She lifted her chin, defiance flashing in her eyes. "What if I don't want you to?" she demanded.

"You've change your mind?" Already? Kakashi couldn't keep up with her.

"You're so unenthusiastic, I feel like I'm holding a kunai to your head," she retorted bitterly. "You'll probably just cry the whole time. Who'd want a guy like that?"

"Sorry if I'm not keen on rushing into something that will irrevocably change our relationship." The fact alone that they were talking about this meant things between them would never be the same again, but then it had been altered since the day she'd received the scarlet scroll. What they'd lived through these last few weeks would probably sour their relationship for the rest of their lives. There was no turning back.

Sakura nodded sadly, avoiding his gaze. "We might not be able to remian friends after this."

"I hope that isn't true," he said. "But I'll do it regardless."

"Thank you," she whispered. "I know this is troublesome for you, but you don't know how much it means to me that... you're one thing I don't have to worry about."

However he looked at it, it still seemed so wrong. Sakura was choosing to do this by her own accord, and yet he worried that her 'choice' may have been an illusion if she felt she had no alternative. Under normal circumstances, she would never sleep with him. She was being forced into this by a situation she shouldn't ever have had to experience... so what if he was no better than Hiroshi in some respect?

But if it was going to be either him or a toothless eighty-year old, Kakashi liked to think he was a marginally better catch.

"When do you...?" he began gruffly, letting the question hang.

Sakura tensed. "It needs to be soon. Tonight."

Kakashi sprang away from the window, already violently shaking his head. "No. No way. You have a broken arm and you died earlier-"

"I didn't die," she said tritely, gesturing to herself. "I'm still here." Even in the low light he could detect the heavy blush that had descended on her.

"Your heart stopped!" he protested.

"That's not likely," she corrected. "If my heart had depolarised, a goof like you could never have revived me. If I didn't have a pulse, it probably means I had ventricular tachycardia."

Kakashi wasn't even going to pretend he knew what that meant. "You nearly died," he said slowly, because he knew that much at least. "You need time to recover. I don't want you overexerting yourself doing... that."

"I'm not doing _that_ for my health," she responded sullenly.

"Even so..."

"Alright. Tomorrow night then." When she saw he was about to protest all over again, she shot him a pleading look. "It has to be done."

He sagged. "Tomorrow night," he agreed.

They said no more after that. He helped her unfold the futon and then left her in peace, heading in the direction of his own bed. Kakashi hoped to catch some sleep before Jin and Ari returned, but he found himself once more unable to relax. A noise was keeping him awake, though it wasn't the typical sound of Otafuku Gai nightlife – that noise had blurred into the background, filtered out of Kakashi's perception.

Somewhere in the room a clock was ticking over.

It was counting down the seconds till tomorrow night.

* * *

TBC


	7. Nuvole Bianche

**Scarlet Scroll**

Nuvole Bianche

* * *

This was not going to be an ordinary day. Sakura knew that the moment she squeaked open the shutters and took a look at the rain-washed streets beneath a sky that looked low, grey, and sullen. She understood how it felt, and envied it a little; if she could piss buckets of water down on hundreds of people and spoil their day when she was feeling down, that was a power she would deeply enjoy and appreciate.

She wanted to stay there, leaning against the windowsill and looking out at all the darker, richer colours that emerged in the world after the rain, but the prostitute's little girl in the brothel opposite was playing by her window with a fan and a doll, and she was prone to waving at Sakura whenever they noticed each other. Sakura rolled the shutter closed again and dressed carefully, fashioning a sling for her arm with a patterned scarf before she went downstairs. Kakashi would be waiting for her at the tearoom around the corner as he always did every morning, and for once she hesitated in the entrance, not sure if that was really where she wanted to be right then.

Well, the fact that they'd arranged to have sex in twelve hours was going to make for awkward conversation over coffee.

It was better than being cooped up on her own, however, so Sakura grabbed a spare umbrella from the provided rack and set off into the drizzle. If she chickened out of facing him this morning, she reasoned, how was she supposed to cope with facing him tonight? When she turned the corner and saw the teahouse, she saw him at the same table he usually took, sheltered from the rain beneath the parasols that were rather meant for sunnier days.

But he wasn't alone. Two masked figures flanked him, watching her approach. From the way Kakashi was fondling that cake fork, he was enjoying the company so much he was contemplating stabbing one of them. And though Sakura didn't like to admit it, she was almost glad the two idiots were there. It meant she wouldn't have to be alone with Kakashi, at least.

Still, she would be even more glad if they both dropped dead. Of natural causes, of course. They didn't want to make Danzou think they'd had anything to do with it – so with that in mind, Sakura hoped Kakashi stopped testing the sharpness of his fork's prongs by stabbing it at the table like that.

Upon reaching the table, Sakura slid into a spare seat, exactly equal in distance from Jin, Ari, and Kakashi, which was about as far as she could reasonable get. A waitress came out of the teahouse, looking annoyed about having to cross through the rain to reach her customers. She looked even more so when Sakura just brushed her aside. She wasn't hungry or thirsty. It was hard to work up an appetite in such dour company.

The moment the waitress had scurried back out of sight, one of the idiots leaned over to her. Sometimes it was hard to tell which one it was until they spoke. In this case it was Ari. "Suda Hiroshi has returned to Kumo. He left last night."

Sakura shrugged. She had expected as much. "I'd flee the country too if I thought I'd murdered someone." What was more unexpected was that Jin and Ari really had bothered to investigate matters last night.

"He can easily be informed of his error," Jin said. "We can send him a lovely little missive in your name, apologising for your unappreciative behaviour and asking for a reconciliation."

"You could," Sakura said coolly, "but why? You hoping he'll come back to finish what he started?"

Ari laughed, but Jin stared at her so intently that Sakura almost thought that was _exactly_ his hope.

"If things have turned violent between you and the target, of course we can't continue with this plan," Ari said.

Sakura's eyebrow ticked up briefly. That was remarkably reasonable for an idiot, but she wasn't going to argue.

"Though one has to wonder what you did to drive him to it," Jin added blithely.

What was she supposed to admit to? Kicking him across the room or daring to try to leave in the first place? She hadn't done anything she felt guilty about, but in their mind she should have just lain back and taken whatever Hiroshi had given her without attempting to resist or fight back. At the very least they would be incensed that she had ever tried to leave, but then they would never learn about this from her lips.

Kakashi hadn't said anything yet. She didn't quite dare to look him in the eye, but she could see out the corner of hers that he was still resolutely staring at his fork. What had they all been talking about before she'd arrived? Was this the cause of Kakashi's apparent dark mood, or was Sakura herself the reason? He had not exactly been pleased about what she'd asked him to do… what she'd asked him to sacrifice.

"We'll have to remain in Otafuku Gai for the time being," Ari continued. "There is still a chance you've conceived so we'll need to know for sure before reassigning you to a new target. There's also the chance that Suda Hiroshi may return shortly, and you can resume relations with him."

Sakura's eyes snapped upon the masked man. "You just said-!"

"It would be unwise to send _you_ back to him, though you _are _a kunoichi. If your attempts to become his mistress had failed, we had always planned to fall back on more radical measures of getting you into his bed. One of which was to kill one of his regular prostitutes and assume her guise. We can still arrange that."

Why had she never been informed of this? She'd thrown her life on the line last night, literally, to walk away from Hiroshi, and now they were telling her that even if he'd let her go she would have been sent straight back to him with a new face? She looked at Kakashi to see if he'd known about this back-up plan, being her official handler and all, but he was still looking at his fork. He wasn't even listening.

Sakura turned her ire back on Ari. "He'd see through that in a second," she said bluntly. "This guy has wiped out whole armies and villages, you _don't_ take him lightly! If he figures out who I am a second time, your top secret plan will be blown and I refuse to take that gamble with my life!"

"Could you please shout 'top secret plan' just a little louder?" Ari asked sweetly.

"If you don't like that option, you shouldn't have messed up," Jin said coldly. "You don't get to refuse."

"So you said last night," Sakura fired back. "So what are you going to do? Throw me down and assault me again? I'll admit the threat of your grubby hands touching me again could convince me to lie down in front of an oncoming train."

Kakashi's fork stabbed the table hard enough to make the teacups bounce in their saucers. They all glanced at the silverware now firmly lodged in the wood, and then up at the man. He was staring at Jin rather hard, though Jin was pretending not to notice.

"You'll just make anything up to get out of trouble, won't you?" Jin said disparagingly, though he needn't have bothered. Sakura knew what he'd done. Ari had seen it. And Kakashi obviously knew Jin's character well enough to believe it.

"If Hiroshi comes back to Otafuku Gai, I will _leave," _she said with full conviction.

"You'll do as you're told," Ari corrected her, and he couldn't have known how closely his words echoed Hiroshi's.

"You just better hope that he never comes back," Jin sneered.

"And you better hope I never hear that either of you have so much as laid a hand on Sakura again," Kakashi said quietly, "or else I will be explaining to Danzou about the tragic end you met when you drowned in the river during one of your many drug-addled nights out."

Here was a threat they could take seriously. Ari just shrugged, unconcerned, for he'd never touched Sakura and didn't plan to; he was a pure voyeur through and through. Jin, on the other hand, was no longer radiating smug confidence. He shot Kakashi an annoyed glare. "You just try it."

"You touch her, you compromise the mission," Kakashi said, putting in terms they would understand. "And I will kill you as Danzou demands I must."

Harsh reprisals against those who compromised 'subjects' like Sakura must have been on his mind a lot recently.

Jin turned away. "Yeah, well don't believe everything she tells you. She's a compulsive liar," he said, but it sounded like the failed bleating of someone who knew he'd been outmanoeuvred. He pushed away from the table. "And this place is a fucking graveyard. I'm going."

Jin walking away from her was just about the only activity of his that Sakura approved of. Curiously, Ari didn't follow immediately. She'd always thought they were attached at the hip by some invisible bungee rope, so that she was half expecting him to fall out of his chair and slide along the street behind his fuming buddy like a poodle on a leash.

"If Suda Hiroshi doesn't return, we will stay here only two more weeks," he said to Sakura and Kakashi, "until an accurate pregnancy test can be taken. After that we'll return home, or return home and start making preparations for the next target, depending on the results."

"Is that all?" Sakura asked in clipped syllables.

Ari lifted his hands in a defensive gesture. "Don't kill the messenger," he chided pleasantly. "We weren't the ones who decided to stay on. If it were up to us, we'd be heading home today, so if you want to take it up with someone, take it up with your sensei. He's the one who decided we should wait and give Suda Hiroshi another chance before shipping out."

Sakura glanced sharply at Kakashi, just quickly enough to catch him look away from her. He'd suggested they wait for Hiroshi? It couldn't be true… but why wasn't he denying it?

"Since I'm sure you have a lot to discuss," Ari said smoothly, "I'll take my leave."

Sakura barely noticed him getting up from the table and walking away in the same direction as Jin. Perhaps there really was an invisible tether between them, after all? She at least had enough sense to wait until the slap of his footsteps against the pavement had faded and she and Kakashi were literally the only two people out on that grey, miserable little street, before she drew in a breath and spoke. "Why would you make us stay? If Suda Hiroshi comes back-"

"I'll kill him," Kakashi cut in softly. "I'll kill him before anyone knows he's here and I'll burn him to a pile of ash so no one will ever know."

"Don't you dare," she whispered.

Kakashi blinked at her, surprised. It was the first time he'd looked her in the eye that morning.

"Hiroshi could easily kill you, Kakashi. It's not worth it," she said. "_He_ is not worth it. Let's just go home."

Kakashi's gaze shifted away from her, back to the fork he'd planted in the table. "Suda Hiroshi deserves to be pecked to death by crows, but that's not what this is about. I'm not hoping he'll turn up. I hope he doesn't come back here for a _long_ time."

"Then why do you want to stay here?" she wondered, because Sakura had had enough of this town. It was a rotting, weeping pustule on the face on the earth, where the bacteria gathered and spread and ate away as the souls trapped there. With Hiroshi gone, it was a weight off her back, but like an animal that senselessly and irrationally tried to flee wherever place it had been injured, Sakura yearned to leave, even if she was forced to crawl. Her subconscious whispered to her that bad things would continue to happen the longer she remained in this man-made hell. She tried to ignore it, but her heart, all too aware of its mortality today, agreed.

Kakashi had never been one to put the heart before logic. "If we're going to do this," he said quietly, "then it can only happen here. Danzou has too many spies watching people like us back in Konoha… here, we only have to worry about Jin and Ari, and they're easy enough to shake without arousing suspicion."

Sakura didn't know what to say. He'd obviously thought ahead already, further than Sakura, and of course he was right. He usually was. If they went back to Konoha now, they would almost certainly be caught.

How awkward. It almost felt like her first lover all over again… trying to sneak around behind her mother's back, hoping that her teammates wouldn't find out and tease her. Except the penalty for being caught now was not some mild ribbing or a disapproving mother who had her heart set on a daughter who would save herself for marriage. If she was caught with Kakashi, she would be dead.

There was no thrill or excitement here either; just a bleak resignation to what had to be done. Kakashi was not her lover. She wasn't tingling with excitement at the thought of sneaking off to a love hotel with him – she was breaking into a cold sweat. Every time she thought of the coming night it set off a cascade of anxiety that rolled through her body, making her sick and making her heart flutter like it was considering giving up again.

The consequences of their decision were tremendous. It went far beyond simple sex, for if their plan succeeded there would be a _child_, and that was something that could never be undone. It would alter their lives forever one way or another.

"You haven't changed your mind?" she whispered, fiddling with the tablecloth.

"Have you?" he shot back.

It was pretty clear that both of them were in exactly the same place as last night, though both wished that weren't so. They'd made an arrangement; their mutual silence on the matter was all the confirmation they needed to hear that it was still the case. She could be kind and speak up, absolve him of any responsibility he felt towards her, but… she couldn't. She had to be selfish.

With a sudden sigh, Kakashi pushed away from the table. "I need a drink," he said.

Sakura knew he didn't mean the non-alcoholic kind. "It's the middle of the morning," she pointed out dimly.

"I know the time," he grumbled, palming money onto the table. At least he wasn't going to leave her with the bill.

"You're not supposed to leave me unaccompanied," she pointed out.

"I'm sure you'll be fine," he said, and began to walk away.

"What am I supposed to do?" she called after him.

"Whatever you like."

Sakura found herself quite alone all of a sudden. Her hands moved restlessly over the damp umbrella lay, soaking her lap, wondering what to do with herself. Kakashi didn't usually just abandon her like that, but even Sakura had to admit she hadn't been keen on spending the day together with him. She was having trouble looking at him. He definitely struggled to look at her without fleeing to the nearest bar for liquid courage, evidently.

How the hell were they going to survive tonight?

The teahouse's door swung open as the waitress braved the rain once more to collect the bill Kakashi had left. "Need anything else?" she asked politely, trying to flatten her hair.

Sakura raised her gaze to the young woman's face, so envious of the simplicity of her life that she genuinely begrudged her. After all, her biggest concern seemed to be whether her hair got wet or not. "Here," she said, passing her the umbrella before she too slipped from her seat and headed off into the haze of drizzle.

* * *

"The Hokage wants to see you, Sai," said the secretary who had once been Konoha's chief hunter-nin before her entire division had been dismantled and transferred to Root, all barring herself.

"Did he seem… upset to you?" Sai inquired delicately. It was always important to know the mood of the Hokage before one went to meet with him… one had to know if it was a good idea to go see the Hokage immediately, or flee the country and change one's name.

The former ANBU chief blinked slowly. "He seems the same to me."

Then he probably wasn't in trouble. Sai bowed and thanked her, and proceeded on up the tower's winding stairwell to the Hokage's suite. There were now Root ANBU stationed about every ten steps, standing perfectly still as if beneath the long shapeless black coats and porcelain masks were bodies of marble. Sai himself was indistinguishable from them in his own mask and coat, so he felt a little sorry for the secretary outside the Hokage's rooms who had to identify everyone who passed through.

"The Hokage wanted to see me," he said to her.

"Which one are you?" she demanded without looking up from her paperwork.

"Sai."

She didn't bother asking for identification. "Go on through."

Inside the Hokage's reception room, it was as dim as ever. The semi-circle of seats were filled with the 'barons', former sub-leaders of Root, back when it was only a small division half-hidden from the Sandaime. Sai remembered working with them, defending Konoha from the most ruthless threats with the most ruthless means, but these days they just sat around in their fancy chairs, bickering and governing. Danzou had once promised Sai himself a chair, but as of yet he'd heard no more on that matter, and he felt that if the offer came, he would pass on it. Looking around this room of stagnating men, gradually isolating themselves from the rest of the village and falling out of touch, Sai was not impressed.

The moment Danzou saw him, he made a welcoming gesture with his working arm. "Sai," he said warmly.

As one of the privileged few, Sai did not need to kowtow. He still had to bow low enough to expose the back of his neck. "Hokage-sama," he greeted neutrally. "How can I be of service."

"I'd just like to borrow you expertise on a certain matter. You only need to answer a few questions for me," Danzou said, crooking his finger towards a lower ranked ANBU dawdling at the edge of the room. At his signal the man came hurrying over, bowing and scraping as he offered up a file to the Hokage. "It would seem that the nine-tailed boy isn't quite as good at hiding as his supporters would hope. He's been spotted rather close to the village, only this morning."

"I see." It was not in Sai's nature to react, and he did not now.

Danzou's uncovered eye fixed him with a speculative look. "You spent a long time in Naruto's company, Sai. Do you feel you understand him?"

"Better than most," Sai said truthfully.

"And what do you think would be his motive in appearing so close to the village?" Danzou demanded. "Is he declaring his intentions?"

Sai thought for a moment. "I do not believe Naruto-kun is one for idle displays, so I do not believe he intends to intimidate you. Nor is he infallible. If he has been seen, I doubt it is because he wanted to be seen."

This answer seemed to satisfy Danzou. He smirked, rubbing his lower lip with amusement. "Then why would he be back, do you think? Perhaps he is contacting someone? Allies within this village?"

"Possibly," Sai conceded.

"You've been keeping tabs on certain persons of interest. Have you seen anything unusual this week?"

"Not that I have noticed." Which would be true, as long as Sai neglected to mention he hadn't been looking too closely.

"In any case, divisions six through thirteen have been dispatched. Perhaps this time we'll be able to bring him in and give the people the justice they deserve. Konoha will no longer be threatened by the nine-tailed monster, or whatever armies he raises against us."

Sai smiled blandly behind his mask. The Hokage did not need to repeat the propaganda lines to him, he and everyone else in that room knew Naruto was a threat to Danzou only and that was why hunter-nin combed the land for him. But perhaps a lie oft repeated would eventually seem like the truth, even to those who told it?

"We must not forget that Naruto-kun is still a young man," Sai said. "He may be able to draw others to him with his charm, but he is still prone to recklessness and naivety, and trusting in those who shouldn't be trusted. I do not believe we need to fear him raising an army."

"You are young yourself and as close as you got to Naruto, you cannot understand the intricacies of what all my strategists and generals have uncovered," Danzou said softly.

"Of course, Hokage-sama," Sai responded swiftly, ducking into another bow. He'd spoken out of turn.

"Before you go there is another matter I wish for you to turn your attention to," Danzou said, holding out his file for Sai to take. "As you know, the summer season hasn't been kind to us this year and crop production is down thirty percent. Not all our gentle citizens understand the need for restrictions on rice and grain supplies, and the black market is growing. I foresee this becoming… quite bothersome. People do not understand that what they receive is stolen from the mouths of others who may be in more desperate need. I need you to gather information and take out operatives if necessary."

Sai had heard there had always been a black market in some form or another, but he'd never paid much attention to it. If it was growing, was it really _his_ job to gather information on it? "I'll see what I can do," he said.

"Excellent," Danzou nodded. "And if you hear anything regarding the nine-tails… you will come and tell me immediately, won't you?"

"Of course, Hokage-sama."

Sai bowed to him and his barons and left, contemplating his new directive. He was so engrossed in wondering where he was going to start investigating the intangible 'black market' that he almost didn't notice when, as he descended the staircase, one of the motionless Root guards standing by the wall peeled away and began to follow him.

Almost.

It wasn't that unusual to be followed in this town, but it was always a little worrying. When it happened it often meant the Hokage had found reason to suspect you of something less than complete loyalty. Strange to be stalked so blatantly, but one didn't complain. Sai remained calm, flicking his follower just one glance over his shoulder to let him know he'd fooled no one, and decided to carry on as normal, continuing homeward to fix his lunch. By the time he reached his own front door, his tail had vanished. Sai paused with the key in the door, wondering if the guy had given up, then he shrugged and went inside.

There he found his stalker, rummaging around his fridge.

"Don't have any ramen do you?" he asked.

Sai's eyebrows shot up as the man straightened, his hood falling back to reveal an tousled mop of straw sunflower yellow hair. He'd been right there in the Hokage tower not fifteen minutes earlier, a heartbeat away from the Hokage.

If Danzou had known, he might have begun to rue the day he'd decided that his closest protectors and subordinates should wear clothing that perfectly disguised their identities. Apparently Konoha's number one enemy could walk right underneath the Hokage's nose without any fancy jutsu or anyone realizing.

"What are you doing here?" Sai wondered mildly.

Naruto knocked his mask up and gave him a reproachful look. Sai supposed that was quite a muted greeting to give such a man in such a situation, but when he was truly, honestly shocked he quite often forgot to contrive to appear so.

"Nice to see you too, Sai, you poker-faced bastard." Naruto dragged a carton of milk from his fridge, and even though it was over a month past its expiration date he chugged it down.

"There are over half a dozen hunting divisions tracking you right now," Sai pointed out to him. "You shouldn't be here."

"Why, you gonna turn me in?"

"Once you leave, yes," said Sai. "If it's discovered you were here and I didn't report it, I'd be on the same charges as you."

"Which were… what?" Naruto scratched his head. "I forget."

"Treason," Sai supplied.

"Sai, you know that's not true."

"Truth doesn't matter so much if a lie has made the village safer than it's been in twenty years," said Sai. "Besides, it's no longer a lie. Planning to depose the Hokage _is_ treason."

"Even if we're talking about a really lousy Hokage?" Naruto asked innocently.

Sai sighed patiently. "The village has benefitted under Danzou."

"You don't really believe that," Naruto said, giving him a peculiar look.

"Not always," Sai admitted. "But it is mostly true."

Naruto gave a loud sigh and slammed the fridge door shut. "I knew it was a bad idea coming to see you," he said. "I came to see Kakashi-sensei really. He was the one who was trying to contact me."

"He's not here."

"Obviously, and Sakura isn't here either." Naruto crossed the room to the window to peer through the dusty curtains. It appeared to be a reflexive habit that he'd picked up since Sai had last seen him. "I came as soon as I could, but it wasn't soon enough."

"I'm sure they're fine," Sai said placidly. "They left on a mission a few weeks ago."

Twitching the curtains shut, Naruto fixed a consternated look on Sai. "You sure about that?"

"I'm sure it was a mission." Whether or not they were fine was another matter.

"What kind of mission? Where are they?" Naruto asked, withdrawing from the window to reexamine the fridge a second time in case something delicious had materialized inside it in the few moments since he'd last opened it. With no ramen, he decided to settle for a plate of dumplings. Sai lamented the loss of his lunch.

"I don't know where they are. And I don't know anyone else who would know except for the Hokage himself."

Naruto regarded the dumplings, not looking as hungry as he had a moment ago. "And if he's quietly had them executed?"

Sai had thought of that. "Then we may never hear from them again."

Naruto set the plate aside. His appetite had vanished entirely. "How can you say something like that, know it could be true, and still say Danzou has been good for this village?"

"Better to run away?" Sai wondered.

A scowl settled low on Naruto's brow, marring his boyish features. What had been a petulant expression as a child was becoming something that could chill the blood on a young man. Not for the first time, Sai wondered if Danzou had made a mistake to make an enemy of him.

"I'm going to find Kakashi-sensei and Sakura, since I'm the only one around here who seems to care," said Naruto hotly.

Before Sai could respond, the front door behind him began to rattle and bang under the weight of a hammering fist. He turned sharply, reminded unpleasantly that he'd forgotten to lock the damn thing when his new visitor opened it without waiting for an invitation.

"Sai? You in?" A Root mask appeared in the. "I got the ink you ordered."

Sai glanced nervously over his shoulder.

"What you looking at?" asked the Root nin.

Naruto had absolutely vanished.

Sai turned back uneasily. "Nothing."

* * *

Every time Kakashi had looked at the clock hanging crooked above the bar, the hands appeared to have jumped forward. The adage that watched pots never boiled couldn't be more untrue. No matter how much he stared at those numbers, time just kept grinding forward without mercy and not all the beer in the world could hold it back.

Not that Kakashi had dived very far into his bottle. He was still a responsible adult, and his obligations weighed heavily on him. He wouldn't be able to do his duty happily or even very willingly, but he would do it with a clear mind and sober hands. Besides, there was only so much he could drink before he went numb below the belt, and the last thing he needed right now was for Sakura to accuse him of sabotaging himself to get out of this ridiculous… morbid… humiliating… perverse….

Kakashi pinched the bridge of his nose and pushed his half- empty glass of beer away. The clock was warning him that midnight was slipping ever closer and he was beginning to grow desperate. There had to be some other way; something he hadn't yet thought of that would provide them both a nice, neat escape from this situation. The phrase 'cold feet' was an understatement for the condition Kakashi suffered from. His feet were not just cold, they were blocks of ice encased in concrete and he had the slightly panicked feeling that he was about to be dropped into a very big, very _deep_ lake from which he would never escape.

He wondered what Sakura was up to at that very moment. She'd obviously come to terms with her decision a long time ago – her determination was unnerving, though he hoped she at least felt the same trepidation as he did. Had she gone back to the inn by now or was she, like him, trying to preoccupy herself with some other banal activity? Kakashi couldn't be sure which. Without him there pushing her to go out and forget herself, Sakura was always content to lock herself up at the inn. He hadn't meant to abandon her this time… but he just needed one day to be by himself and come to terms with what they were going to do.

He'd been wrong to look for absolution in alcohol, however.

With one last look at the treacherous clock, Kakashi gave up staving off the inevitable. The turning of the earth had paid no attention to his personal problems and night had fallen far too early for his liking. Dropping his change on the counter, Kakashi left the bar and joined the stirring revelry outside beneath the glowing streetlights. The rain hadn't let up since he'd hidden himself away among the diehard alcoholics, and though it hadn't deterred anyone from coming out to enjoy the night, it pattered down on Kakashi's bare head to add dripping cold insult to injury.

He had nowhere else to go now except back to the inn. He'd put it off for as long as he could, but he'd reached the limit.

The inn wedged between two dreary brothels was as quiet and dark as ever when he returned. He nodded briefly to the housemaid who was sweeping the stairs, passing her on his way up to the floor where his team's rented rooms lay. As usual, the room he shared with Jin and Ari was empty; the idiots never spent a night here they couldn't spend in a whore's bed.

He approached Sakura's room even more cautiously. Was it too much to hope she wasn't in? Well, yes… because if she wasn't, that would be serious cause for concern. And yet even now as he walked to his fate he was still hoping for any – just _any _excuse to not do this.

But when he knocked politely at the door, Sakura's soft voice beckoned him inside. "Come in."

She was kneeling on the floor by her futon, packing a small bag with one hand. She didn't look up at him as she said, "I was beginning to think you had run away."

"Considered it," he grunted.

Her hand paused on her hairbrush. "So did I."

So she was as scared shitless as he was. That was one comforting thought at least.

Sakura drew her bag shut and stood to pull at a coat that was hooked on the edge of the window lintel. With only one free arm she struggled with it, and Kakashi automatically moved forward to help drape it over her shoulders. She muttered a thank you, but Kakashi was still bemused. "You going somewhere?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "_We_ are."

"Oh." So this room wouldn't be the scene of their demise.

"There's a… a hotel a few blocks away," she explained.

Kakashi knew exactly what kind she meant. "A love hotel."

"Yeah."

"That's a good idea." It was something he might have suggested before too if he hadn't been trying damn hard not to think of _anything_ to do with this.

"You ready?" she asked.

_As I'll ever be,_ he thought, stifling a sigh that threatened to escape him. Taking his faintly bemused nod as consent, Sakura stepped round him and took the lead. They passed the maid on the way down the stairs, and she stepped aside for them with a polite bow that made Kakashi uncomfortable. He would prefer if their trip out tonight went unnoticed by everyone, even if this woman couldn't possibly know where they were going or what they were up to.

Out in the street, Sakura pulled her coat's hood over her head, as much to obscure her face as to keep the rain off. She glanced once at Kakashi to make sure he was still with her, then set off up the hill.

It was a uniquely painful silence that followed them. Kakashi had never felt the need to fill gaps in conversation with inane chatter, but this lull between them gnawed at his nerves. He had no idea what to say to her as they made their way steadily through the rain and the damp crowds. He had no idea where they were going either. Every now and then he stole a peek at Sakura, and her dripping green hood gave nothing away.

"You ok?" he asked carefully.

Sakura either didn't hear him or chose not to answer. After a moment she drew to a stop and touched his arm to draw his attention. _Here_. She pointed to building of grey concrete whose only distinguishing feature was one luridly pink neon sign that was intermittently flashing the words "Love Inn". Whether this was deliberate or a sign of a faulty circuit was hard to tell.

"Here?" Kakashi couldn't keep _all_ the apprehension from his tone.

Sakura shrugged at him, and after a quick glance around the street she hurried up the steps and disappeared inside. She must have chosen this particular place for a reason, and perhaps while he'd spent the day committing entropy in a bar, Sakura had been busily scoping out the local hook-up locations. Kakashi wasn't sure how he felt about that, but he supposed he should be glad that she had gone for the more understated kind of place. Otafuku Gai was a place where tackiness ran high, and you could find just as many hotels shaped like fiberglass castles and elephants here as ones built in more traditional shapes with wood and brick. This one fell somewhere in between.

As Kakashi followed Sakura out of the rain and into the hotel foyer, the benefit of choosing a love hotel for their purposes was more apparent: there was not a single person in sight.

These were places that catered to anonymity. A couple of chairs and a potted plant lines the walls for appearance sake, but the counter for check-ins was unmanned and shrouded by a barrier of thick, misted glass. There would be no cleaners or staff here during business hours, and the only service came from a slightly dirty looking machine on the wall that might at first glance been mistaken for a vending machine.

Sakura wandered over to it, pushing her hood back. Under the cheap florescent lights, she looked pale and ever so slightly ill. She certainly hadn't bothered with any make-up tonight. "Which one would you like?" she asked him. Kakashi came to look over her shoulder, and realized he was looking at a panel of pictures showing a small variety of rooms and beds. Some were lit up, though quite a few darkened, presumably indicating which ones were available, and beside each picture was a button and a price.

Kakashi's brain ground to a resounding stop. Sakura was waiting for his answer, but she might as well have asked him which finger he didn't mind snipping off. There was one room with an obvious marine theme going on, painted mostly blue with cartoony fish swimming across the walls and duvet – a scribbled note explained the provided scuba suits were not available right now due to cleaning. Another room appeared to be lifted right out of a little girl's fantasy with heaps of pink cushions on a pink bed in a pink room and teddy bears hung from the ceiling like it was a macabre crime scene photo of a mass suicide. Another room had a red, heart-shaped bed. Another one purporting a 'medieval theme' looked no different from the room they'd just left behind at the inn, complete with shoji screen walls and a worn-out futon, though this one appeared to provide elaborate kimono costumes and one wig (also absent for nit treatment). Kakashi took one look at the room lined entirely with mirrors and decided he would sooner do it in the gutter.

"Well?" Sakura pressed, glancing at him, and he suspected she was only making him choose because the ghastly collection had stumped her too. All the vaguely normal looking rooms were taken and the only ones left were the ones that were a little too perverted, even in a town populated exclusively by perverts.

"Um…" Kakashi reached out to tap his finger on the only room that might not haunt his nightmares in the weeks to come. "That might do."

The room he'd pointed out was the only themed room that might have passed for normal – at least fifty years ago. It was done up with spartan, retro furniture and though the description said it was modelled on some TV show, neither Kakashi or Sakura were familiar with it, so it looked normal enough.

"I guess that'll be ok."

Before Kakashi could even think offer, Sakura began pushing money into the machine. The moment she pressed the button for the retro room, it's the picture went dark and a key clattered into the dish below. She held it out to him. "Room two oh one," she said, giving him a faint smile that did nothing to disguise the uncertainty in her eyes.

He looked between that key and her conflicted face. "We don't have to do this," he reminded her, for what it was worth.

And though Sakura's smile actually widened, paradoxically it only emphasized how sad it was. "Yes, we do," she said.

He sighed inwardly. "As long as you're sure."

They met no one else on the way up to the room, and once the key let them inside Kakashi took careful stock of the layout. It smelled clean at least and though the carpet had seen better days, the sheets on the bed looked new. Of course, the moment he saw that bed his mouth went remarkably dry. He looked back at Sakura who was also staring at it a little uneasily, and when their eyes met, they both knew exactly what the other was thinking.

"I – uh – think I'll have a shower," Kakashi said suddenly, spotting the connecting bathroom. "Unless you want one first?"

"I already showered," she said quietly, looking as if she just wanted to get it over with. He might have obliged her if he wasn't quite so conscious of the fact that he smelled quite strongly of cigarettes and alcohol – the signature of anyone who spent the whole day in a bar. "I guess I'll just make myself comfortable," she said lightly and sat down on the bed to test its softness.

Like a real retro bed, the springs creaked beneath her as she bounced.

_Great. _Kakashi backed rather quickly into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. For longer than he cared to admit, he remained backed up against the sink, mind racing. There was a window beside the shower stall, but far too small for his frame to wriggle through. He as very much trapped, if not by physical walls then at least by his own conscience. He had promised to do this for Sakura. He _would_ do it.

But everything about this screamed wrongness. It was unethical. Immoral. Sordid. One upon a time that girl out there had been his very young student, and even if that seemed like a lifetime that belonged to two other people, certain images would always stay in his mind. Images like taking his new team through the forest, while Sakura picked flowers and offered them to her companions based upon their meanings. Blue forget-me-nots for Sasuke, to represent coolness and serenity. Yellow buttercups for Naruto, because it symbolized brashness and idiocy – and mostly matched his clothes. Pink hibiscus for herself, because she wanted to be seen as graceful and beautiful. And to Kakashi she gave a curled frond of green fern, to symbolize health and resilience. At that point she'd thought he, like every other adult and teacher, was immortal and unbeatable. After his first brush with a certain jonin from the mist village she'd revised that position, but she'd always looked up to him.

It felt like a betrayal to resort to this. Her life was not supposed to collide into his like this. How desperately sad it was that the only man she had to fall back on was him. She deserved better.

At the very least she deserved better than his weasel-like reluctance.

Piece by piece, Kakashi stripped his clothes off and left them in a heap on the floor, along with the light gold charm necklace. The shower offered only one tiny bottle of soap, but it was enough. He rubbed it into his skin and into his hair until even his mother who had once battled long hours with him in the bathtub would be proud. He ran out of soap, and therefore ran out of an excuse to stay in there any longer. He dried himself and examined himself in the mirror very briefly, tracing a finger down the puckered line crossing his left eye, and then the more natural crow's foot that had begun to appear in the last few years.

She definitely deserved better, but this was all he could give her.

Like the inn, the love hotel provided its patrons with complimentary bathrobes that seemed like a strange hybrid between paper and towel. A white one was hanging on the back of the bathroom door and Kakashi slipped it on loosely.

He appraised himself one last time in the mirror – time enough to ask himself one last time what the hell he thought he was doing – before he unlocked the door and stepped back into the bedroom.

Sakura was already in bed. From the look of it she'd ditched her sling and donned her own bathrobe, and was now sitting up against the hard capsule-like pillows with the thin sheets pulled up over her lap, arm cast resting lightly on her stomach. She looked like the last person who should be in a place like this.. and she was looking at him like she was just a bit worried that he was going to eat her alive.

Not a great feeling.

He stepped towards the bed.

"Could you turn the light off?" she asked him suddenly.

Kakashi paused. "Sure." He moved to flip the switch and the room plunged into darkness, which Kakashi didn't find particularly more comfortable when he had to bump and feel his way over to the bed.

The springs creaked disturbingly under his weight, and Kakashi realized the mattress wasn't just fashioned after a fifty year old design – it probably was fifty years old. He began to unfasten the belt at his waist, but Sakura must have heard him and touched his arm.

"Can we leave our clothes on?" she asked.

He went still, strangely and painfully aware of the warmth of her hand through his sleeve. "Sure." Abandoning his belt, he shuffled between the cool covers. As he went to lay his head down on the lumpy pillow, something small and plastic scraped his neck. Kakashi picked it up.

A complimentary condom, laid out like a mint.

Kakashi discreetly tossed it aside. They wouldn't be needing that tonight.

As his eye began to adjust to the dark, thanks to the slivers of light peeking around the edge of the curtains, shapes began to emerge from the darkness of his surroundings. The tiny mini bar. The broken, plastic radio on top of the mini bar. The wooden ceiling fan directly above him that was trailing loops of dusty spider web. Sakura's shape beneath the covers beside him, so far away.

Neither of them were moving.

"We don't have to-" Kakashi began.

"You don't have to keep saying that," she said shortly.

"Right," he sighed. "I'll just get on with it, shall I?"

Picking up his acerbic tone, he almost literally heard her wince. "I'm sorry, it's just… awkward. Let's just get it over with?"

"Sure," he muttered in a resigned sort of way, and propped himself up on one elbow to squint at her dark shape beside him. As far as romantic interludes went, this was pretty poor. Not since a teenager had he ever begun a sexual encounter with a girl by hiding from each other in a dark room with lots of clothes between them, but he'd coped back then and he would cope now. Steeling himself, he reached out to what he thought might be Sakura's face and brushed his fingers against her cheek.

He felt her stiffen. "What are you doing?" she whispered.

"Uh…" Kakashi's mind went blank again. "Getting in the mood?"

"That's not necessary," she explained to him. "This isn't really… I mean, what we're doing isn't actually sex, it's just a formality. You don't have to get me in the mood. So can we not do those things? No… no kissing or anything, ok? It just gets weird."

Kakashi's hand dropped to the mattress, defeated. "Sure." She certainly had a funny way of looking at things, sex wasn't sex and it was the prospect of _kissing_ that she found weird, but if she didn't want the courtesy of being seduced beforehand he would respect it. It hadn't just been for her benefit, however.

"What are you waiting for?" Sakura whispered, shifting anxiously. "I'm ready."

"_You_ may be ready," he stressed.

If she hadn't noticed already, this was _not_ the sexiest situation for either of them. The sight of a woman lying in bed whispering that she was ready to receive him was nowhere near as stimulating as it otherwise might have been. His manhood had never worked on a hair-trigger to begin with, and nothing about this mood or Sakura in a cast (in the wake of her first heart attack no less) enticed him.

"Oh." Sakura sat up a little, sounding surprised. "I see… I'm so used to Hiroshi, I didn't think…"

Kakashi almost felt the need to blurt an apology. It was a fine line he was being forced to walk between repugnant over-eagerness like Hiroshi and physical antipathy that could be almost as insulting. He didn't want to appear _totally _indifferent to her, yet he couldn't force something he didn't feel.

"Do you need a moment?" she asked him.

She couldn't possibly see the incredulous stare he now gave her. What did she expect him to do with that moment?

"Or I could help," she added quickly, turning to him. "Um… if you don't mind, that is."

"Help?" he echoed uncertainly.

Sakura reached over, touching a hand to his lap beneath the covers. "May I?"

"Sure," he murmured, though he wasn't sure what she intended. Not until the same hand found the edge of his robe and slipped inside and her naked fingertips met his equally naked thigh. The muscle jumped, he couldn't help it. Sakura hesitated but she didn't stop, and with slow coaxing movements her nails traced circular patterns along flesh he had never realized could be so sensitive.

Kakashi held his breath. The conscious, rational part of his brain reminded him to relax and go along with it, but more instinctive parts of him rebelled, clamping down ruthlessly on any response she tried to tempt from him. He'd spent all day fighting this moment, and now that it was here he was dismayed to find he was still fighting it. _Just relax_, he tried to tell himself. _Let go. _It would all be over sooner if he accepted it…

Her hand was moving higher. However much he warred with his own biology, it wasn't a fight he was equipped to win. His breath was shortening, climbing like her hand, like his pulse. Mouth dry, he waited for that inevitable and horrifying moment when she would close her hand over his sex and they would never be able to look back. Sakura had drawn closer and now her shoulder bumped his – she was close enough that when she bowed her head he could smell her hair.

Nothing special. She'd washed her hair with the cheap, generic brand of soap that the inn liked to stock, and as such she probably smelled quite like everyone else who used that bathroom. But right now that mild, inoffensive scent crept into his senses like a fine perfume. Her thumb stroked a bold line up his inner thigh to his groin, and when the back of her fingers lightly brushed against his cock, his breath hitched. He knew he was lost. They could both tell that he was already half erect, which was half more than Kakashi had expected to be so soon.

"Do you need me to continue?" he heard her ask meekly.

Should he be pleased that he'd risen to the challenge, or just ashamed? Kakashi might have given her credit if he wasn't sure this was evidence of just how long it had been since he'd last known a woman, or at least he didn't like to think he was the kind of guy who was so easily aroused by such disturbed situations. Did she think of him as just one more sweaty bastard looking for an easy fuck?

"Is that enough?" Sakura asked again when he failed to answer.

He nodded, a little dazed at how calm she appeared and how level her voice sounded. Whatever her thoughts, she was keeping them to herself. Weeks with Hiroshi had desensitized her to intimacy, or at the very least taught her how to hide her emotions extremely well. When he'd joined her in this bed, she'd begun to hold something back from him, turning off a part of herself as easily as he'd turned off the light, and he wasn't sure yet if it made this easier or even more unsettling. He didn't like to think she was going to treat him the same way she'd treated Hiroshi… or that she felt she needed to.

She certainly showed no hesitation when she placed one steadying hand on his shoulder and slipped her leg over his lap, straddling him snuggly. Kakashi sucked in a sharp breath, not sure where to put hands. But that seemed a trifling issue when he could feel Sakura pushing aside the clothing that separated them.

The moment he felt their warm flesh meet beneath the tangle of robes and sheets, his hands clamped to her hips. "Wait," he gasped. They were moving fast. Too fast.

Cotton rustled in the darkness. Sakura's hair brushed his cheek as she curled her plaster-cast arm loosely around his neck, lining their bodies up. Her hips shifted gently into his and at the first hot touch of her sex against his he froze, knowing what was coming next. This was it. He couldn't stop what was about to happen, nor could he stop his body's primitive reaction to the slight weight of the girl hovering over him, or her bottom rubbing against his growing erection, knowing that in moments he would be inside her.

Sakura finally slowed. All he could hear was her soft breathing and to his disgrace it was far steadier than his own. Between all new lovers there was a moment of anticipation where neither knew how their match would play out, or how their bodies would come together. Normally it was exciting to have that thrill, not knowing if it would be good, bad, passable, or mind-blowing. False lovers like themselves felt only the bite of uncertainty. Whatever would happen next, it would not be pleasant.

"I'm sorry, Sensei," she whispered, close to his ear.

But none of this was her fault. When Naruto had left he'd told Kakashi to protect her, and this was what it had come to. He'd failed her in every possible way, and hearing her apologize for it opened a sharp pain in his chest that made him clench his eyes shut. His fingers dug more deeply into the bunched cloth around her waist as her own slipped discreetly between them.

For the first time she touched him, lining his half-hard cock to her entrance. Then her hips angled inwards and incredible heat broke over him. With one precise roll of her hips she took him inside her, deep and so snugly she could take him no further.

Kakashi uttered a muffled curse against her shoulder, unprepared for the jolt of raw pleasure that scraped his nerves. He needed a moment to adjust – to settle his shaking his hands – but Sakura was impatient. At once her hips began to lift and roll in a gentle, measured rhythm, designed to coax and arouse swiftly. Pleasure so basic and strong it stung surged through his veins with each slide. His body was slave to such simple manipulation. As Sakura's controlled breathes broke against his temple in time to her tempered thrusts, Kakashi felt himself growing harder within her, and loathed that he couldn't hold the outward composure she showed.

She'd evidently had a lot more practice than him.

"Is it ok?" she whispered to him in a voice steady enough to mock him.

Kakashi grunted a strained sound of agreement, feeling a little like he was falling apart at the seams. Disgust and agony warred with pleasure. His clothes itched against his burning skin – he wished he could have taken them off. His hands flexed restlessly against her, still unsure what to do with them and half frustrated that her bathrobe offered little clue to the shape or feel of her body, and half guilty that he even wanted to know. And did she realize that her fingertips were stroking the back of his neck like that, or did she do it without thinking?

Perhaps more than anything it was that little caress that made the burgeoning desire spiral further. In the dark there was nothing but the thrum of blood in his ears and the heat of her body thrusting methodically against his – that delicate touch of her hand grounded him. It made him almost able to kid himself that she was someone else. Someone who actually wanted to be with him.

Even if all that lay between them there were thin clothes, there was a distance that couldn't be overcome even when pressed against each other like this. To Sakura this meant nothing; she went through the motions like a machine, completely unflustered and almost preternaturally aware of exactly what to do to push his body so close to the edge so quickly.

He supposed… if it was only necessary for _him_ to climax, that was how it would be. They would do what was required and nothing more.

Sakura's rhythm began to pick up, her thrusts coming stronger and faster, more determined. Did she think he was taking too long? Kakashi tried to hold back a moan and failed. His arms moved automatically, wrapping around her waist to press harder into her. It was shameful, but he was beyond self-control. Prickly sweat broke across his skin as his sanity began to slip; he needed to hold her and thrust up into her, wedge himself deeper into that slick, perfect heat and forget for a moment why they were doing this. She was just another warm body. That was enough, wasn't it?

The pleasure built. Sakura's body was demanding, and at his stifled groans her fluid grace became a hard ride, her hips rocking so hard against his the dratted bed springs had begun to creak. She was going to push him over the edge by sheer force. No tempting, no teasing. She wanted him to finish _now._ She was holding her breath.

Kakashi couldn't bear it any more. With a pathetic cry, he bucked beneath her, holding her fast as he plunged and released, pulsing inside her.

Every moment of it was as exquisite as it was unbearably humiliating.

The second it was over, tremors of fatigue swept over him. He couldn't speak or think and he was only partially aware that Sakura was lifting herself off him and quietly retreating to her side of the bed, setting her robe straight. When he finally recovered the energy to lift his head and look at her, her outline against the soft light from the window let him know was as composed as ever.

"We should go," she said quietly. "Before Jin and Ari realize we're gone."

He hadn't even caught his breath yet. "Right..."

As Sakura slipped off to the bathroom to change in privacy - such a strange notion after what they had just done - Kakashi pulled his clothes on mechanically. He moved like a dead man, though he had the presence of mind enough to leave a tip for the sorry soul who had to clean these rooms and wash these sheets every morning, but all in all they'd rented this room for less than half an hour; they'd hardly got their money's worth.

Dressed, they stepped out into the brightly lit hall and finally they could both see one another... and neither could look the other in the eye. They made their way stiffly and silently back to the foyer to deposit the keys back in the machine and then suddenly they were back on the street, as if nothing of consequence had taken place. The sky was still raining, and the people were still laughing and drinking and rolling around the streets looking for women, fun, and trouble, and no one noticed the couple escaping the cheap love hotel to join the sedate flow of traffic.

Kakashi glanced sideways at Sakura as they walked and noticed she was sliding the lucky cat charm he'd given her round and around on her wrist a little compulsively. Normally he might have placed a comforting hand on her shoulder at a moment like this - even if he didn't always know what to say, she usually took solace from a simple touch. But right then Kakashi couldn't bring himself to touch her. Scant minutes ago he'd been inside her, and despite their casual appearance to others, something raw still leapt through the air between them.

Neither spoke until they reached the inn, and only then when they parted ways outside the door of Sakura's room. Her eyes rose briefly to his before darting away. "Thank you," she said rigidly.

He placed his palm against the doorframe, leaning his weight there lightly. "My pleasure," he said without an ounce of humour.

They both waited, perhaps for the other to say something, but all that was developing now was an even more excruciating silence. Sakura stepped back into her room, eyes on the floor. "Goodnight then," she murmured.

He sighed and turned away.

"We need to do this again tomorrow night," she reminded him before he could move away.

He returned a weak smile. He'd guessed as much, and that was what made this moment all the more painful; he knew it was merely the first of many nights to come. "G'night, Sakura."

At last she slid her door shut, leaving Kakashi alone in the corridor. There, without anyone to see him, he slumped sideways and pressed his face to the wall, silently asking himself one very dire question.

What the _hell_ had he done?

* * *

TBC


	8. Eros

**Scarlet Scroll**

Eros

* * *

Sakura had never paid much attention to Kakashi's hands before, but now she had plenty of time to examine them when they were pressed to the mattress a few inches from her head. Short nails. Blunt fingertips. He was mildly double-jointed, judging by the way his thumb bent into Z-shape when he convulsively dug his fingers into the sheets. They were covered in all kinds of scratches and scars – he didn't take care of them, though he should have. They were strong hands and ever so large… but always gentle.

Always gentle. She had to remember that.

Even so, when the hand suddenly disappeared from beside her, she instinctively hunched her shoulders and squeezed her eyes shut, expecting a blow – a slap across the back of her head, or a hard smack to bruise her backside – or perhaps just to be seized around the neck and her face pushed into the pillow. But it never came, of course. He was only readjusting her leg, nudging it wider to accommodate himself. He was always gentle with her.

There were a lot of words for what they were doing. Screwing. Fucking. Having sex. Intercourse. Making love. Sleeping together. Being intimate. Copulating. But there wasn't a word passionless enough to fit. They couldn't have been more clinical if they'd been doing it on an examination table surrounded by a fleet of men and women in white coats, taking down notes. But this was a dark room in an impersonal love hotel where the soft squeak of the mattress beneath her stomach was nearly drowned out by the amorous screaming of a woman next door. By comparison, Sakura was silent, keeping her arms tucked in as she concentrated on her breathing to help distract her from… other things. Kakashi was taking longer this time. Sakura wincingly tilted her hips back, trying to find a more pleasurable position for him. She hoped he would finish soon; it was beginning to hurt.

Over their noisy neighbour and the rhythm of the bed springs, Sakura caught another sound, of footsteps moving down the corridor outside and she turned her head to listen. A sudden bang made the door jump in its frame. She jumped and instinctively tried to recoil away from the door, almost off the bed. Kakashi's weight held her pinned. He paused and went still, but only to touch her shoulder. "It's ok," he said. "Just some drunks."

He was right. Slurred laughter faded away down the corridor, but the adrenalin kick still pumped in Sakura's veins. She didn't tremble, but she felt weak enough that if she didn't watch herself she might start to. If anyone caught them here… if anyone knew…

She was always so sure that next voice she heard or the next footsteps would belong to Jin pr Ari.

Kakashi resumed again, but it was too soon. Her composure had been scattered, and she struggled to reign in her breathing. Her shinobi instructors – Tsunade, rest her soul, and even Kakashi himself – had always taught her that to control the breathing was to control the self. With that control slipping, her focus was lost, and she was unbearably aware of his body pushing into hers. Invading. She must have made a noise because Kakashi suddenly stopped again.

"What's wrong? Does it hurt?" he asked.

So he had noticed.

"My… my arm," she said, which wasn't a total lie. Her wrist was healing faster than it normally would, but it wouldn't stop aching for a few days.

"We can stop," he said.

He sounded hopeful, and Sakura desperately wanted to agree. Each time he asked and gave her a way out of this madness, he made her a little weaker… which was why he needed to stop asking. "Just get on with it," she said, more sharply than she felt.

She heard him sigh, and after another minor readjustment he began to move against her again. Sakura held herself still and waited… counting her breaths, counting the seconds, counting his thrusts. When she felt his body tighten and those thrusts became shorter and rapid, she knew he was approaching the end, and she almost welcomed that moment when he finally tensed and gasped. His whole body shuddered and strained, and compared to Hiroshi who climaxed with all the energy of a dribbling belch, there was no mistaking what was happening to Kakashi.

But sometimes, like now, he was slow to get off her and seemed to forget their agreement for no unnecessary touching when his hand absently massaged her hip as he tried to catch his breath. Things like that sent a web of tiny hairline cracks across her composure. She knew where she was when they limited contact to only that which was required, and every time he touched her like a lover he threatened to throw her off balance, into a place where the lines between lover and teacher blurred, and the memories of everything Hiroshi had done to her felt so fresh she sometimes thought he was still the one on top of her.

But how could she blame Kakashi for things she couldn't share and he couldn't guess at? He was doing his best, that was obvious, and it wasn't easy or natural for either of them. All Sakura could do was wait for him to remember himself, and the moment he eased back onto his heels she quickly rose and flipped her robe back down over her hips. Even if it was too dark for him to see anything, correct propriety between them always reasserted itself as soon as he was done fucking her.

If anything it was those moments that were the worst. She always wondered if she should say something to him in those precious seconds when it seemed like their relationship was hanging by its last fraying thread, but what could she say? Inane non-sequiturs about the weather wouldn't do. She could comment on the things that had been different tonight – like his sudden increase in stamina or how he'd had no trouble getting aroused this time – but she didn't want to sound like she was rating his performance, or worse, ridiculing him. She saw how he looked at her sometimes, or rather, refused to look at her, and knew that guilt and self-loathing was eating away at him. She knew far better than to mistake simple physical reactions like arousal or climax with desire, or even willingness.

She'd endured Hiroshi long enough to remember those occasional twinges of pleasure... and how devastating it felt afterwards.

That was probably how Kakashi felt right now, sitting in silence, in the dark. There was nothing either of them could say to make it better, so she simply rose to her feet and crossed to the bathroom where she could wash and change again.

The walk back to the inn was always conducted in silence, to the point where Sakura wondered why they even bothered walking together, and Kakashi had stopped saying goodnight to her as they parted ways outside her room. If she was lucky, he might touch her on the back as she stopped outside her door and he carried on to his, but the contact between them was fleeting compared to what it had been like _before..._

And tomorrow, they would both continue doing their best to pretend it had never happened.

* * *

The book was a bore and Sakura had been steadily tearing pages out of it all morning. Chapter three was now making up the best part of an origami crane army that she lined up next to her futon, and chapters five through seven were now somewhere out on the street, having been turned into airplanes and thrown from the window – to varying degrees of success. The prostitute's daughter in the brothel opposite had watched her, and now as Sakura settled down to scribble pictures on the blank pages between chapters, she could look up every now and then to see other rudimentary planes flying past on the wind.

Before coming to Otafuku Gai, Sakura had never been good at handling her boredom. Being shut up in a little room all day would have driven her mad with frustration, but necessity had forced her to cope with her restless nature here. She'd learnt to stave off her fidgets by occupying herself with trivial activities, even if they were quite destructive. The woman who cleaned the rooms was growing increasingly exasperated with her, for every time Sakura left her room it bore an uncanny resemblance to the site of a bomb-blast. In turn, Sakura was growing pretty annoyed with this cleaner too. She sometimes had to seriously debate whether or not to leave for a bite to eat, knowing that the little shrew would sneak into her room the moment she was gone and dismantle her nest of clothes, bed sheets, shredded paper and boxes of take-away food.

She'd had to clear a space for her crane army, and now she was devising an army of paper dogs to challenge them. In the grand finale she might set fire to them, and hope -just a little bit- that they took the whole inn down with them.

When the door jerked open behind her she knew immediately who it would be. The maid would never disturb her, Kakashi would always knock, and even Ari tapped twice before he flung it open with or without permission. Jin, true to form, strode over the threshold and at once made a disgusted sound. "Don't you ever clean up?"

Sakura carried on folding a little dog. "Does it bother you?" she asked, with a strong hint that if she discovered _anything_ that bothered Jin, she would utilise it to the fullest extent.

However, Jin ignored the jab and stepped over a small barrier of clothes she'd formed from all the wardrobe cast-offs she no longer needed for Hiroshi. "It's a fine day. Why don't you go play outside?"

Sakura snorted. "Why? You want to search my room?"

"Got something to hide?"

Now Sakura was the one who ignored the question, pretending to be too absorbed in her craft to acknowledge him. She heard Jin step closer, and in the next moment, her crane army was soundly crushed beneath his foot.

There went her grand finale.

Slamming her hand down on her half-finished dog, she glared up at Jin. "What?" she snarled at him "What do you want? Why is it so important that you have to pester me all the damn time?"

He crouched down, uncomfortably close. "You know, I was just thinking it might be best to warn you... Suda Hiroshi may be coming back to town sooner than we thought. Maybe you ought to be picking these clothes off the floor and getting ready?"

"Bite me," she growled.

"Don't tempt me," he said, dragging his fingers down her arm from shoulder to elbow, stopping short of her cast. Sakura immediately regretted her choice of sleeveless dress today, and she glared at his hand like she would a snake. "You better stay in our good graces, Sakura-chan. We are the ones deciding your fate."

"That sounds like a threat," she said, teeth clenched.

"Just a fact," Jin retorted.

He reached out as if to stroke her again, but this time Sakura smacked his hand away "As if! You two seem to forget that you're just chaperones! Kakashi is my handler - not you, not Ari - no one but Kakashi!"

"And how does that feel?" he asked her suddenly, voice dropping into an eager whisper. "Sakura-chan, how does it feel to have your sensei bear witness to all of this? To have him standing there, watching his protégé become a slut? You _do_ know he watched it all, don't you? We all watched. It was a beautiful thing."

Sakura was quivering. Not with fear or disgust, but with bone deep rage that radiated through her muscles, demanding that she give in. Demanding that she kill him.

"You know you better watch out for that guy," Jin continued, "he always got really into it, if you know what I mean."

Sakura's arm lashed out, clubbing him around the head before she could stop herself. It might have been worth it, for that brief instant where she saw him flinch and duck his head against the blow, but the satisfaction was fleeting. Jin retaliated fast, grabbing her injured arm and shoving her just enough to overbalance and land on her side.

He didn't release her arm, and she held herself rigidly in her awkward position, refusing to let him see she was in pain.

"Give me an excuse," he whispered to her. "Oh, _please_ give me an excuse."

She held her breath, glaring up at his mask. She had to remember that Jin and Ari were untouchable as far as she was concerned; anything exacted against them would be exacted against her and Kakashi two-fold. He was only trying to goad her into giving him an excuse to kill her or turn her over to Danzou to be executed, and it wouldn't surprise her if he was under express orders to push her until she snapped.

Sakura gathered her temper, forcing herself to breath slow, measured breathes. "You'll get what's coming to you one day," she said quietly.

Jin seemed amused by this. "Oh, is that a threat?"

"Just a fact."

Evidently Jin didn't like smart-asses who turned his words around on him, and for a moment his grip around her tender arm tightened so hard she almost let out a whimper.

"What's going on?"

At the sound of Kakashi's voice, Jin smoothly dropped her arm and stood as if all he'd been doing was crouching to pet a beloved puppy. He turned to the door where the other man stood and raised his hands. "Don't get your panties in a twist. Can't two people have a conversation without being accused of something?"

Kakashi stared at him intensely as he brushed past and absconded down the hall. When he was gone, he turned to look at Sakura, almost as angrily. "What did he do?" he demanded.

Sakura straightened, ignoring the pain in her arm and began picking over the squashed remainders of her paper cranes. A few had survived but the rest were now little paper pancakes with muddy boot marks. She sighed. "He didn't do anything. He barely touched me."

"Barely?" Kakashi said loudly. "He shouldn't be touching you at all. What did he do?"

"It's not your problem!" she rebuked.

"Of course, it's my problem. You never tell me anything, but it's always my damn problem," He slid the door shut and crossed the mess of her room to the window. As he passed her, a plastic bag dropped onto the mattress beside her knee. Sakura peeked inside curiously, then made a revolted sound.

"Apples?" She plucked out the offending fruit. "Tossed salad and fish-? I asked for deep fried-"

"That's not healthy," he interrupted.

"Who cares? If I'm pregnant, you should be listening to my cravings, not ignoring them." When Kakashi looked at her sharply, she fell quiet, half feeling like she'd said something rude. Taboo. It was probably a little inconsiderate to speak so flippantly of pregnancy when it might be true...

Nevertheless, she pointedly set the food aside and shifted her attention glumly to her arm, rubbing her abused flesh and picking at the rough, fraying edges of the cast. It was past time to remove it. The injury was still tender, but the bone had set for a while now and would heal better with a simple strap bandage than a cast. The medical bag with her scissors was buried somewhere beneath her hills of debris so she set about trying to unearth it.

"What are you doing?" Kakashi asked.

"I need my scissors to take the cast off," she told him. "I know they're here somewhere."

"Perhaps if you cleaned up once in a while you wouldn't lose things."

"You're beginning to sound like Jin."

That shut him up.

But the medical kit persisted in hiding from her and she sat back on her heels with an angry sigh. Perhaps there was a logic to keeping things tidy, after all, for right then she didn't have the patience or energy to mount a proper search.

Kakashi pushed away from the window, slipping something from his hip. "Here," he said, dangling a kunai into her view.

"I can't use that with my left hand," she pointed out. "I'll cut myself to pieces."

"Then give me your arm," he said, like he was talking to a petulant child who was just making excuses.

Kakashi knelt down in the small clearing she'd provided for her armies, oblivious to his crushing the remaining cranes who'd survived Jin. Sakura pressed her lips together and offered her arm silently.

It didn't even take a second. Kakashi lined up the kunai against the cast, and then in one savage pull he slashed it open from end to end. Some might have called that reckless, but only those who didn't know how Kakashi's hands were as precise and reliable as lasers. Sakura never felt even the faintest flicker of wariness when he held a blade less than an inch from a major artery. She was more concerned about the hand gently cradling her elbow as he stripped the empty shell of the cast from her arm and tore away the tufts of cotton beneath. His fingertips were brushing her inner arm. She could feel the raised scars and calluses against her comparatively soft skin and wondered if he was aware of the contact as intensely as she was.

Why was it that she could put one of these apples on her head and happily let him take aim at it with a knife from a hundred feet away, but the gentlest of touches made her want to scurry for the nearest closet?

When the last bandage came off, her arm felt remarkably naked, and was scored with bands of red from the wrappings. It also smelled quite like a sweaty sock. "I'll get you a cloth," Kakashi said, who was always kind enough to notice such things.

"I've got two legs," Sakura responded. "I can walk to the bathroom myself."

Kakashi groaned as she stood. "You don't have to be like that."

"Yes, I do," she shot back, "or you'd coddle me to death."

As she left the room and stalked down the corridor towards the bathroom, she realised that since the moment Kakashi had arrived she had not looked him in the eyes. That was getting harder, she thought, but it was easier to keep him at a distance this way. Was that unfair? Was she being too hard?

The line she'd drawn between them at night had its purposes, though now she wondered if it had extended beyond, interfering with all their other interactions. Why else would little touches that she'd never noticed before start scraping on her nerves like sandpaper? Why did it bother her so much that he still wanted to do considerate things for her – things she had previously always appreciated? How could it all feel so suddenly inappropriate?

She passed her teammates' room on her way to the bathroom and glanced casually inside. There was no sign of Jin, thank goodness, but Ari was certainly in there. Sakura barely contained her snort of contempt. If he was going to seduce the cleaning maid up against the wall like that, he ought to have the presence of mind to shut the door first.

What did women see in men like that?

It was something to tell Kakashi about. However, by the time she returned to her room, he'd vanished.

* * *

"What'll it be?"

"The usual, please," Kakashi said.

But the bartender only blinked at him slowly, as if it was an old joke he'd heard a million times before. He didn't remember Kakashi's face, let alone his 'usual', despite Kakashi having crashed into his bar every night for the past week. True, Kakashi was not very familiar with the rules of alcoholics. He'd only been dabbling in drinks each evening because, if nothing else, they gave him the little lift of courage he needed before he went back to Sakura.

"Beer," he clarified.

The bottle clunked on the bar before him and Kakashi dropped his head into a hand. By now he'd gotten used to the atmosphere, though he mostly tried to ignore it. He'd grown up lecturing his friend, Asuma, over the dangers of smoking, and guilting him over the dangers of passive-smoking, and yet here he was allowing himself to be gradually wreathed in smoke and alcohol fumes and sad bastards just as miserable and quiet as himself.

And if Sakura never noticed he smelled like the armpit of a boozehound... well, that was because he showered religiously before he ever went near her.

It always seemed like no time at all before both the hands on the clock were both pointing to the '12' and the beer in front of him was drained. Kakashi paid – but didn't tip – and began to weave his way back to the inn, feeling the same old apprehension mount with every step. As innocuous as he thought he was, he never managed to escape the notice of the working women, and they were not unlike ninja in the way they could move in the shadows and attack from nowhere.

"Need some relaxation, my love?" one called from a doorway. Another just attempted to grab him and pull him into an alley. He wasn't sure what had brought on the sudden upswing in attention. Except one did comment as he passed, "You look like you need cheering up."

Kakashi had passed the days when he would have even thought about accepting such generous offers. He wasn't a kid anymore, nor an old pervert looking for new thrills. The glamour of sex without meaning or feeling had lost its appeal and for the last few years as Konoha had succumbed to fear and insecurity and the demons that preyed on them, he'd begun to think there were important parts of life he'd passed over. The village he'd consigned himself to protect had turned its back on him, so what was left to do? Chip away futilely at the new power structure until he died? Or move on with his life and find an adequate woman to begin the family he'd denied himself for so long?

But then Sakura had trampled through his plans with her typical finesse. It wasn't her fault; she hadn't asked for this mission and he could just as easily have refused her request and condemned her to suffer alone in the process, but he still felt... stunned, like someone terrifyingly strong had come up and kicked him in the side of the head. He no longer knew what was up or down, whether he was moving forward or retreating, or whether this plan of theirs was genius or criminally insane.

Most of all, he no longer knew what this meant for his future. Sakura's fate, he was already certain of. He'd overseen enough subjects of this project to know what happened to the women once they got back to Konoha, and he knew that she would have a few options, however limited, however pitiful the consolation. Himself? What kind of part would he play in her life? How exactly was one supposed to carry on normally after fathering a child with a subordinate – not out of love or even a fleeting affair – but out of abject desperation for survival?

He had to remember he was getting ahead of himself. Sakura was not pregnant yet and perhaps she still wouldn't be by the end of the month. Not everyone was compatible, and he remembered perfectly healthy couples like Asuma and Kurenai took almost a year to conceive.

That thought left an unpalatable taste in his mouth. He didn't want Sakura subjected to a year of this... not with him, or Hiroshi, or _anyone_.

And hey... even if she did conceive, there would still be the possibility that he wasn't the father, especially if she really had been lying about Hiroshi being sterile.

When Kakashi reached the inn, he found the maid just inside the entrance buffing shoes. Ari and Jin's shoes were gone, and Kakashi almost felt like relaxing. Once those two headed out for the night, they wouldn't be back till the break of dawn.

Upstairs he passed straight by Sakura's room and headed for the shower to wash the smoke stink from his hair and brush the beer breath from his mouth. From what he could tell through the film of slime on the mirror there were no serious defects in his appearance tonight, not that it ever mattered. Sakura remained insistent on darkness every time they were together, probably out of some physical antipathy towards him or her own insecurity.

He arrived outside her room punctually and tapped on the door before entering. He expected Sakura to be fully dressed and ready as usual, which was why he was momentarily stymied when he saw her stretched out on her futon, dressed in her sleeping yukata with a thermometer of all things sticking out of her mouth. Not only that, her room was unusually tidy, and he suspected the maid may have dropped by if Sakura had gone out to find a proper meal. She sat up sharply as he stepped inside.

"You're sick?" he blurted.

She stuffed her thermometer back into her medical kit. "I'm fine," she said. "I just thought I felt hot, so I took my temperature. And... it's up, so..."

"Oh." They'd been through this around the same time last month, and since she was approximately in the middle of her cycle right now, a raised temperature was one of the first and few signs of ovulation.

If that was the case then by tomorrow the window of opportunity would be closed, and they could finally stop. Whether or not their attempts had worked would remain to be seen, but there was little they could do to affect the outcome after this point. In fact, there probably wasn't much point in even trying again tonight. "So you don't want to..." he trailed off, never comfortable with actually voicing it aloud. "I assume that's why you're dressed like that."

"Well, it might be a bit late," she said uncomfortably. "Although, I could be wrong. Normally I get a pain if I'm ovulating, but I don't have that... so maybe we should keep trying just to be sure?"

He waited for her to go on, but Sakura had fallen quiet. "What do you want to do?"

"What do you think is best?" she asked instead.

Kakashi exhaled loudly. Great. She just _had _to shuffle the choice onto his shoulders. Logically, he knew they should continue for however long the window remained open, yet here was a chance to end it.

Sensing his hesitation, Sakura shook her head. "Look, never mind. We should see it out... but tonight will probably be the last time."

He sighed, almost glad she'd taken the choice out of his hands again. "Probably?"

"Definitely," she said more firmly. "But don't look so relieved."

Kakashi knew for a fact his carefully schooled expression was exactly that. "Are you going to get dressed?" he asked graciously.

She looked down at herself and around at her mild pigsty of a room. "I don't feel like trekking all the way across town right now," she said quietly. "Can we just use this room instead?"

"Here?" He glanced down at the bed dubiously. "Are you sure?"

"Why not?"

"Well... it's your bed. I didn't think you'd want to use it for that... with me," he said.

"You don't smell that bad," she told him. "And I really don't care. But if I have to spend one more night in that insipid love hotel, I'll scream."

Sakura seemed fairly certain of this, and he couldn't profess much love for the place either, even for its most tame and inoffensive rooms it was too sordid for his liking. This room, however, had become Sakura's private space over the course of the past few weeks; her home away from home. Did she really not mind him encroaching like this?

"Ari and Jin won't be back for hours," she continued, in case that was why he hesitated.

He didn't feel like arguing with her, so he reached behind him to slide the door shut and crossed to the futon where she sat. There was that moment where he got to witness flashes of discomfort and awkwardness cross her face, but the moment he began to unbutton his coat she all but dived for her lamp to switch it off.

Kakashi paused. Under other circumstances Kakashi might have been offended that his body was only palatable when the lights were out, but in this case it hadn't done much good. The window let in more light than the one at the love hotel, and they just happened to be situated across from a brothel that was glowing with so many lights, signs, and lanterns that it might as well have been daylight. Kakashi could see Sakura perfectly well, and from the way her face was vigilantly turned away from him, she knew she could see him too.

Stripped of everything but his underwear, Kakashi lowered himself to the futon, where Sakura shuffled sideways a fraction to make room for him. He wondered if she was going to remind him of their no-nude rule, but she only gave him a small, painfully weak smile before she turned over onto her stomach without a word and hauled one pillow beneath her head and another beneath her hips.

That was her part over. The rest was up to him.

He swallowed, familiar enough with what came next that his body was already reacting. He knew better than to desire Sakura's body, intellectually speaking, but his prick was far simpler creature, and just the thought of being inside her had him hard. He knew it was pathetic. Hopefully Sakura just thought his control was masterful.

Kakashi slid off his boxers and drew the covers before he moved over to position himself over Sakura. As respectfully as he could, he lifted the hem of her yukata up and out of the way, doing his best to ignore how her soft thighs brushing against his or how full and firm her backside felt. These were not things he was permitted to enjoy, though normally they were things he enjoyed above all else. Likewise, when he lined himself against her and pushed in, he tried not to think too much about how hot she was, or how tight, or how unbearably good she felt.

To hold himself in check and not hurt her, he always moved slow, at least at first. It was hard to tell if Sakura ever felt uncomfortable, since from beginning to end she would lie there, breathing as slowly and regularly as if she was asleep. Her fortitude was as admirable as it was off-putting, but now with the glow of pink and orange lights spilling through the window, he could see she also fixed her eyes on the far wall and stared at it almost unblinkingly, like the glazed stare of a doll.

It was easier for Kakashi to close his eyes and picture someone else – someone closer to his own age, less scarred, not so slight, and blonder, with warm brown eyes instead of glassy green ones. Someone he was allowed to touch and who didn't so blatantly hate being near him.

This would be their last night together. He guessed he should have felt relieved about that, and perhaps he would have if he wasn't already aware of what lay ahead. If they failed it would have all been for nothing. If they succeeded they would have to watch their backs, conceivably for the rest of their lives however long or short they proved to be. And what if the child resembled him in some way? People often knew exactly who _his_ father was the moment they clapped eyes on him, and the resemblance between Naruto and his father had grown so strong that by the day he was exiled, there were few people left in the village who didn't realise the young man they were forcing from the village was the son of their most beloved Hokage.

What was important was the here and now. Whatever happened nine months from now was something Kakashi didn't have the strength or courage to face. Bridges couldn't be crossed before they were reached, so he concentrated on the short term goals: getting Sakura home safely, keeping the two idiots away from her, and making sure she never had to go near Hiroshi or someone like him ever again. And, more immediately, he needed to finish what he was doing. Then at least these excruciating encounters would be over.

Brown knitting in focus, he moved against Sakura, savagely willing himself to reach his release sooner. Sometimes it worked, but tonight his head was too full of other fears jostling for attention. He tried to shift his position for a better angle and closed his hand over hip, his fingers slipping between her and the pillow beneath her so that his fingertips almost touched her belly.

Her skin felt just as creamy and supple there as she did elsewhere, he thought, despite doing his best not to think, _period_. He couldn't quite stop his fingers from moving either, pressing in tiny feather-soft circles that was more instinctual than deliberate.

And there were other things he couldn't help noticing either... like how a fine tremble rippled through the muscles beneath his touch. Or how her breathing changed from something so steady and measure to something a little quicker whether she realised it or not.

That was interesting, and it made Kakashi slow for a moment. It was the first time in all their nights together that he had noticed any kind of reaction from Sakura, or at least one that he was fairly sure was positive. He slipped his hand further beneath her till it spanned her belly completely, under the guise of adjusting his angle, and when he began to move against her again he took careful note of the way the muscles of her abdomen fluttered. He could feel her pulse too, and realised it wasn't the dull drumbeat he normally felt.

"Kakashi..."

Was that a moan of longing or a warning? One thing he knew was that her voice wasn't so even anymore, and when she had spoken it had become obvious how close she was to panting.

If it was a warning, Kakashi didn't heed it. After one particularly hard inward stroke he let his hand drift down to cup her moist sex and pressed until she gasped and writhed. "Kakashi!"

Her inner muscles clamped down around him, tightening like a fist. "Sakura," he groaned.

"Kakashi! Get – off!

Her gasp had been of shock and her writhing was of protest, and in one violent shove she bucked him off and escaped to the other side of the futon, breathing hard. "What the hell are you playing at?" she demanded, forcing her flyaway hair back down with an angry hand. "You're freaking me out!"

A little too slowly, Kakashi dragged the abandoned pillow over his lap for some semblance of woebegone modesty. He saw Sakura's flashing green eyes and the righteous anger that quivered through her frame, and didn't for a second feel sorry. "Heaven forbid sex actually feel pleasant, Sakura," he deadpanned.

"I told you I didn't want to do things like that," she growled. "It's not necessary. It's weird. You only need to concentrate on yourself and it's not that difficult!"

"It's not _difficult_?" he repeated loudly, irritation scraping at his badly frayed nerves. "What do you know about how difficult it is! Do you have any idea what it's like to do this while you just lie there like a lifeless corpse? I'm not some kind of animal, but you expect me to rut like one!"

Sakura compressed her lips as she glared at him, but she at least seemed to hear him. She didn't scoff or ridicule him. For that he was at least grateful.

"This isn't natural... and it's not right," he said, dropping his voice once more. "We've done it your way every night so far but I'm drawing the line now. If we continue, we do it my way, Sakura, or not at all."

Her eyes glittered in the low light and her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Define 'your way'," she said quietly. Her posture might have radiated defensiveness but she hadn't thrown him out yet.

"We do this properly," was his only answer. He skimmed her rigid form and the threatening scowl she levelled at him, and decided to brave her wrath. "First, you can't be scared of me or what I do. And secondly, you have to take off that robe."

If it was possible, Sakura stiffened even more. "What?" she asked icily.

"Or I go back to my room and we forget this."

For a long time they sat in silence. Kakashi waited for his answer as Sakura's glare dropped from his face to the mattress between them. The noises of the street outside that he'd tuned out began to intrude again. Distant laughter, the sharp pops of firecrackers, and the faded twang of a shamisen that Sakura hated so much. A whole chorus must have played out before Sakura stirred and spoke. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be touched by a man after you've been through everything I have?"

His head dropped. "No." He would never pretend he could ever fully understand or share the experiences she'd been subjected to.

"It sucks," she said plaintively.

He nodded lightly. "Yeah," he sighed.

After more thoughtful staring at the sheets of the futon, Sakura straightened her shoulders and sat up. She reached for the belt of her robe.

"Don't force yourself," Kakashi said quickly.

She paid no attention to him now. A few tugs of the knot and it fell loose... the robe slipped off her shoulders and pooled around her.

It was the first time he'd ever seen her naked, and the shapeless yukata had never done her justice. She presented a neat figure, full of compact curves that voluptuous women who boasted measurements twice as generous would envy. But she didn't look particularly worldly or sexy at the moment, with one arm looped self-consciously across her chest and her eyes fixed conspicuously on the floor. She was a petit, perfectly formed nymph, and she had the self-confidence of a mouse.

Hard to think that a few nights ago she had been the one to initiate things between them so boldly and with so little hesitation. As an actress she was second to none, but with the clothes off he saw her for what she really was.

Just another scared kid so far out of her depth that she may have already drowned.

Kakashi shifted across the sheets till his thigh kissed hers, and reached out to cup his hand around her cheek. Her gaze jumped briefly to his and then away again, like a mouse that knew it had been caught by the cat. It wasn't promising, but as his hand slid down to grasp her nape, fingers tangling in her hair, he thought he felt her relax ever so slightly when her eyes drifted shut.

He leant forward till their foreheads touched. "You know I won't hurt you," he said.

She nodded.

"You know you can trust me," he said, touching his lips to her cheek, then her ear.

After a palpable hesitation, she nodded again.

"You know you have a really cute mole, right here." He gently poked his finger against her side.

Sakura flinched, and a huff of breathless, nervous laughter escaped her. "Stop it," she whispered, though her admonishment held no ire.

Kakashi dropped a kiss to her shoulder and pressed his nose against her skin. She smelled like soap, shampoo, and a zesty hint of faded perfume, and while her arms remained folded across her chest, sill partly shielding herself from him, she didn't shy away.

"Lie down with me," he said, and ran his hand down her gently curving side to urge her.

She resisted. "We shouldn't confuse this with something it's not," she said anxiously. "We're not lovers-"

"Even if that's true, that doesn't mean we have to torture ourselves."

She shook her head. "I don't want to hurt our friendship-"

"Anymore than it already has been?" he pointed out. "I can't pretend this will fix anything, but at least can we stop pretending this hasn't been hurting us? We're not from Root. We can't leave our emotions at the door when we're together. If we can make it pleasant for each other then why is that so bad?"

"Making it pleasurable isn't the same as pleasant," she responded curtly. "Hiroshi was sometimes capable of giving me pleasure. That was when I felt the worst."

"Because it makes you feel so ashamed," he said softly, "I know. You can't reconcile hating everything he does to you with the physical pleasure. And you worry someone like Jin is right when he says you enjoyed it, like maybe you deserve to be called a slut and a liar."

Sakura turned her eyes up to his. "Yes," she said slowly.

"I've seen enough of these missions to know you're not so strange to feel that way." He reached up to stroke her hair, brushing it away from her face. "But you can't believe that, and you can't start fearing your own body because of him. You _picked_ me to help you because you trust me, and we're equals, and if you ask me to leave right now I will. I've done everything you've asked so far because I thought that was best for you, but if we need to make love, we will _make love_. We have to stop fearing each other and treating it as a necessary evil or it really will ruin us."

With a faint groan, Sakura tipped her head back. "Your chat-up lines are _awful," _she said.

Apparently he hadn't convinced her. Kakashi dropped his hand and began to look around for his pants, suspecting he would need a cold shower at this point before he would be able to sleep.

Sakura's weight flopped down onto the pillows. He glanced down in surprise to see her resting her hands to either side of her head, leaving her body totally bare to his gaze. "Lie down with me," she said quietly, repeating his own words back to him.

Kakashi felt like all the air might have left the room at that moment, and in a daze he lowered himself down onto the futon, eyes caught by hers. Once he was stretched out beside her, Sakura rolled to face him. "I have one condition," she said.

"Ok."

"You can do anything," she said, "but don't kiss me on the mouth."

If she needed that one ground rule to establish a line between him and a real lover, so be it. "That's fine," he said, smoothing his hand down her side to follow the sharp dip of her waist, and watched as she tensed uncertainly. He raised an eyebrow at her. She looked as if she expected him to ravish her mercilessly to within an inch of her life, although she would be disappointed if that was the case. "I'm no deviant, Sakura."

"That remains to be seen," she responded ambivalently.

Even now after all their nights together, they were as unfamiliar with each other as they ever had been. Kakashi acknowledged her with a grunt. He didn't plan to push his luck with her, so as he gently urged her onto her back, he decided to keep things simple.

Sakura's legs slipped open to accommodate him automatically when he moved over her, and with little preamble he thrust into her. It might have been no different from their usual pattern, if not for the fact that they had never done it face to face like this before. Sakura was doing her best to turn her head away from him and regulate her breathing as mechanically as a ventilating machine, even though she was not as successful as she normally was. Her chest expanded just a little too fast to be indifferent to his weight above her. It could have been because she felt more exposed to him, or perhaps it was just his fingers, sliding through her hair and tickling her nape.

"Just relax," he told her as he picked up a slow, languid rhythm that had always suited him best. All the while he looked for the telltale signs of pain, and though Sakura was prone to squeeze her eyes shut it didn't seem to be out of pain.

For any other lover Kakashi might have dedicated a fair amount of time and energy to exhausting most forms of foreplay before even thinking of joining with her this way. But Sakura was not one to be played with. She was incredibly resistant to the idea of treating sex like it was recreational, and frankly Kakashi didn't want that either, and leaping straight into cheap common tricks to arouse her would be met with more opposition than if he gave her what was familiar, then let the pleasure find her naturally, as all water inevitably found the sea.

She'd allowed him to take whatever liberties he liked with her, but Kakashi only permitted himself a few. He may have pressed his face into the curve of her neck to inhale her sweet aroma, or passed the rough pads of his hand across the silky lines of her arms and over her flared hips, but the touches were brief. Any longer and they would seem more like selfish gropes than reverent strokes intended to put her at ease.

And gradually she was relaxing. The intensity washed from her limbs, eroded. She was beginning to trust he had nothing extreme in mind, and for the very first time she began to move with him, accepting his thrusts with a tilt of her hips, inviting him just a little deeper.

Kakashi closed his eyes and gave himself over to the moment, almost able to pretend that this was normal. Sakura could have been a real lover, albeit a shy one not prone to intense reactions... although that was beginning to change, he thought, when he heard the breath catch in her throat. Sweeping his hand over her belly, he once more felt the flutter of sensitive muscles, before he continued lower to slide his thumb through her folds.

Sakura started at first, grabbing his shoulders as if her first instinct was to push him away. She must have resisted that urge, and in a moment they both had their reward when she sighed shakily and her thighs trembled around his hips. Kakashi bit his lip. His stamina had never been great to begin with, and Sakura's timid yet remarkably earnest reactions could undo him too soon. For her sake he hoped to hold on, though he couldn't stop himself rocking into her a little faster, pressing deeper until the tremors in her legs stopped and she was locking her knees about him just that little bit more tightly. Her fingers gauged dimples into his back.

When the tiny moan escaped her lips, he knew she'd given up her precious indifference. He buried his face in her neck and kissed her skin, moving harder and stronger, until her soft pants became gasps and their bodies slid together, slippery with sweat and shining in the lights of the brothel. Tender, cautious reverence was left behind. Kakashi's hands swept everywhere, clutching her shoulders, squeezing her thighs, and stilling her hips as he drove the rhythm higher. One settled in her hair, the other against her neck, and he put his lips to her ear to whisper senseless encouragements and flattery: She was doing really well. She felt great. She _sounded _great. She could touch him too. They were nearly there. Just a little more.

Mindlessness gripped them, and for a while they were locked in a tight embrace where nothing else mattered but what was happening to them. They thrust and sighed and melted, until all Kakashi could hear was the thud of his heartbeat.

Even though Sakura never made a sound when she came, there was no missing it when her arms suddenly seized around his neck and she arched off the futon, trembles and shudders running right through her to her very core. Kakashi held her tightly against him, already too close to his limit. With a rough grunt he spilled over the edge for the final time, falling into that place where time was suspended along with his senses.

He came back to the sound of breathy gasping in his ear. Was she laughing? Kakashi wordlessly lifted himself up, ignoring the fatigue that pulled him down, and caught Sakura's chin to turn her face to his.

Her damp cheeks flashed in the pink lights.

"Don't," he pleaded, his heart breaking. "Sakura, please don't cry."

He brushed the moisture from her face with his thumb, but that seemed to only make matters worse. Her face crumpled and tears slid freely down her temples and into her hair. Kakashi quickly shifted his weight off her, onto his side, and gathered her closely against him, pressing her face to his shoulder just as the silent sobs began to shake her frame.

Had he been wrong? What if she hadn't been ready for this? He'd thought all she'd needed to do was open up a little more, but what if she felt he'd bullied her into this? And while he may not have expected smiles and laughter, he had really hoped there would be no tears.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair. "Sakura, I'm sorry."

She shook her head against him, unable to speak more than the odd broken syllable of. Although he didn't understand what she wanted to say, as long as she clung to him he knew at least the embrace wasn't unwelcome. She might ordinarily have kicked him off the bed by now, yet Kakashi couldn't leave her like this. What kind of dog had sex with a woman and then left her in tears?

And this was no fleeting outburst. Sakura choked and sobbed, and if she fell quiet it was only until she could draw in enough breath to begin again. Whatever was hurting her was deeper than he had fathomed, too deep to be bottled up again as soon as it was released. Was it sympathy or shame that brought water to his own eyes?

Kakashi continued to hold Sakura close until, some time later, he gradually became aware that her paroxysms had stopped. Neither appeared to have any inclination to move. Kakashi's fingers had found their place, stroking lightly over her hair in a soothing fashion as Sakura's breathing leveled out. He only stopped when he finally fell asleep.

* * *

TBC


	9. Negative Capability

A/N: Doven has done some beautiful fanart for Scarlet Scroll (and House of Crows for that matter!), and the link is up on my profile, so all you awesome people should go check it out! :D

* * *

**Scarlet Scroll**

Negative Capability

* * *

Sakura didn't know what had woken her. Through the window she could see the sky had lightened to a soft indigo that preceded sunrise, and the nightly rave in the streets had finally gone quiet. She didn't think that would have roused her, but perhaps she'd grown so used to the light and the noise that their absence disturbed her?

Or was it the soft puff of air brushing her back?

Slowly she turned over, and the sleepy, burgeoning confusion and shock never got a chance to take hold of her. The moment she laid eyes on Kakashi the memories of the night filtered back. She remembered the gentle pleasure and the tears, and how hollow she'd felt afterwards… and cleansed. When had she fallen asleep? When had Kakashi, for that matter? How had that even been possible for either of them?

But what should have been a supremely awkward moment felt rather ordinary, and natural in its simplicity. Kakashi was still fast asleep, stretched out on his stomach at a semi-respectable distance, and perhaps because of this unguarded state Sakura was able to look upon him without fear or panic or nail-biting embarrassment. When he woke the acute anxiety might very well come flooding back, but until then she almost felt content to bask in their last intimate moments together. There would never be another night like this, she thought.

There was relief with that thought… and something else too. Something that made her heart knock against her ribs. Audibly.

No… that sound wasn't her heart. Sakura blearily lifted her head from the pillow. Those were footsteps coming up the stairs, staggering and heavy.

A jolt of pure adrenaline shot through Sakura, more effective than any shrill alarm clock. She reached to grab Kakashi's shoulder, intending to shake him, but the noise had penetrated his sleep and he shifted onto his side the same moment Sakura sat up. Both of them had their attention trained on the door, listening as the footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs at the end of the corridor. They waited. It could have been one of the staff, or any one of the other guests.

The sound of a slurred, drunken curse removed all doubt, and suddenly the footsteps started up again, approaching, fast. Kakashi hissed an expletive beneath his breath, and faster than Sakura had ever seen him move, he scrambled out of the bed, grabbed his clothes and flung himself out of the window – half a second before the door slammed open and Jin appeared, swaying.

"Still up I see…" he said thickly through his mask. And although it was no guarantee he could see straight in the state he was in, Sakura discreetly tried to inch herself across the futon to obscure the imprint in the pillow and the rumpled sheets that Kakashi had left behind. "You sssshould come out with us some time, Saku-chan. Free drinks for girls in some places, you know. I'd like to see you let your hair down… unwind those panties from your cunny."

Sakura's lip curled in revulsion as he stumbled forward, laughing at his own joke. The nauseating stench of booze washed over her. "You stink," she muttered.

"Of the best beer in all the five nations!" he cheered, throwing out his hands. "Isn't the fire country just the besssst?"

He stepped on her yukata which lay discarded on the floor and looked down at it in confusion for a moment. Then his greedy, lecherous eyes wandered back to her and over her bare arms and shoulders. "Waiting up for me?"

Sakura's fingers clenched the sheets to her chest so tightly they were in danger of tearing. "_Get out!_" she yelled, not caring if she woke the whole of the inn. In fact, she hoped so.

"Guys can get real tired of the hard-to-get act, sweetie," Jin sniggered, moving closer to the futon. "Everyone can see you're dying for a real man to teach you a lesson."

To her horror, his shaking, fumbling hands moved to his belt and he began to unbutton himself. "What the hell are you doing?" she demanded, not nearly as loud as before. Humiliation choked her.

"Just stay quiet," he rumbled. "No one has to know, if I pull out in time…"

The kunai was beneath her pillow. She would cut it off before it ever came near her, and as he came to kneel on the end of futon, still fighting with his belt, she slipped her hand behind her to close her hand firmly around her weapon.

At exactly the same second, another man stormed into the room. Jin never knew what hit him – and what hit him was the corridor wall when Kakashi seized him by the straps of his uniform and hurled him back out through the door. It wasn't the first time Jin had been knocked unconscious this way. Kakashi only paused long enough to make sure he was out cold before turning back to Sakura, running a hand down his severely rumpled shirt which was almost certainly on backwards. He appeared to have dressed in quite a hurry. "You, ok?" he asked.

She shrugged and rolled her eyes. A drunken Jin was more of a danger to himself than anyone else. "It's nothing," she said.

He raised an eyebrow, almost certainly capable of distinguishing 'nothing' from 'something'. "Well then," he sighed. "I better take him back to his room."

"Of course," Sakura agreed cordially, watching him turn away to finish zipping the fly he'd forgotten. "And thank you."

He paused, perhaps to ask what she was thanking him for, but then he seemed to decide against him. Just as well; Sakura didn't think she was thankful that he'd cheated her of a good excuse to make Jin bleed. But as she watched him pick up Jin's arm and artlessly drag him away down the hall she wasn't sure exactly what she felt… except that maybe an important chance to seal and end to their affair on a fitting note had just slipped away from her.

For that, she could thank Jin.

* * *

It was, as they called it, 'the mother pot', or the 'jack load', if Sai remembered his idioms correctly. He had only come into this little corner shop to ask the keeper some questions about reportedly shifty looking characters who had been seen loitering in the area (Danzou's regime frowned heavily on teenagers with enough spar time to loiter when they could have been signing up to Root). When he'd seen the badly fitted rug that matched nothing else in an otherwise meticulously decorated bookshop, he'd been curious. When he'd seen the trapdoor beneath it, he'd been suspicious.

Now he was standing in the basement, next to a worried shopkeeper who couldn't stop wringing his hands- and for a good reason. He definitely wasn't licensed to hold this kind of stock. Plunging his hand into the nearest sack, Sai lifted a handful of ultra high quality rice grains and watched them run between his fingers like sand. "Are you aware that due to southern volcanic activities, rice production is down more than thirty percent, and varieties such as this are currently subject to strict rationing?"

"I had this stuff saved since before the rationing," the shopkeeper said, a curious mix between defiant and terrified.

"And it's all for your own personal use?"

"Of course."

"And you're not, say, selling it on for a neat profit?"

"Uh..."

Sai moved on from the sacks of rice to more interesting boxes containing foods that had been outright banned by Danzou's council for violating newly imposed health standards or protectionist policies. Not only was Suna's Hard Rock candy bad for your teeth, they were unpatriotic. He looked at the sweating shopkeeper. "I have been tasked by the Hokage himself to root out the rats of the black market and destroy it by any means necessary, which includes carrying out whatever punishments I feel are appropriate to guilty parties. This is not your lucky day."

"Steady on!" cried the shopkeeper. "A guy's got to make a living! Books don't sell as well these days since all the bestsellers like Icha Icha got banned."

"Times are tough for everyone," Sai said indifferently. "Everyone must make sacrifices for the greater good, but people like you grow fat off the suffering of others by stealing food from one person to sell on to the next at extortionate prices."

"My prices are very reasonable," said the shopkeeper, betrayed by his indignity.

"ANBU will be pleased to hear that," said Sai, taking the old man by the elbow to usher him back to the ladder leading to the shop floor. He would definitely earn some points from Danzou for stumbling on this little cache of illegal goods.

"Wait a minute! Can't we come to some sort of arrangement?" the shopkeeper begged. "I'm not hurting anybody, and surely there's something here that would be of interest to you."

Sai paused. "Are you offering me a bribe?" he asked, surprised.

"Of course not, sir!" spluttered the old man, "I would never presume someone as respectable as yourself would ever be so corrupt as to accept a bribe, and I myself would never dream of dishonouring you or myself by bartering for leniency!"

Sai sighed. "Pity." Bribery would have been an intriguing experience. He began pushing the man for the ladder again.

"B-but if you were open to a gift that would show my appreciation for all the hard work you do for this village...?"

Sai pulled up short again. "What did you have in mind?"

The man rushed to a cupboard at the end of the cellar and flung it open. "The finest wine and sake in Konoha, from the orchards of the earth country!"

Sai didn't drink, and so remained unmoved.

"Magazines!" the shopkeeper cried, ripping open a box of gentlemen's special interest literature. "You don't see girls like this anymore on the top shelf."

Sai hadn't ever been that interested in porn either, and though there were some excellent models that could be used for references, he preferred more realistically proportioned men and women for his artwork.

Seeing he had once again failed to interest, the shopkeeper gestured towards him. "I see your hands are covered in ink stains and you carry the odour of oils. Would you by any chance happen to be an artist?"

Sai looked at his hands, and realized to others he must look like a stereotypical artist or one very mucky pen-pusher. "I am."

"Then perhaps you would be interested in these?"

From behind a mound of grain he dragged a box that must have been sitting there a long time to have gathered this much dust. He brought it to Sai and folded back the flaps for him to examine the contents, and when Sai looked inside he would have gaped if he had been capable of such strong emotional reactions.

Reaching inside he withdrew one small, dusty bottle of Jet ink. Anyone else standing there might have said, 'But Sai! There are plenty of ink bottles on sale at the stationary shop!', because the quality of Jet ink was known only to specialists like himself. This was the finest ink there was, pure black, waterproof, and with just the right viscosity that it would spread from a brush like liquid silk. All specialists like himself coveted such quality, but supplies had run low as border tensions increased and the art supply shop Sai had once frequented went out of business. He hadn't been able to procure this ink for months now.

And beneath these bottles were palettes of paints, rarer still for being imports.

Sai looked at the shopkeeper, mildly astonished. "Where did you get all this?" he asked.

"I couldn't possibly name my suppliers, but it's well understood that the Hokage's barons always have a little spare of everything going, and they would hardly notice if one were to skim a little off the side." The shopkeeper pushed the box towards Sai. "Have the whole lot if you like. This stuff is a bit too niche to sell on anyway since no one else wants it."

Certainly none of barons could appreciate the kind of fortune Sai held in his hands. "How much would you have sold a bottle of ink for?" he asked, holding up the Jet.

"Oh, a couple of ryo," explained the shopkeeper. "Or less depending on what a customer could afford."

Sai blinked. "But this box is worth hundreds," he said.

"And it costs nothing to liberate from the philistines living in their fancy mansions who couldn't tell watercolours from poster paint," confided the old man, winking at him. "Better that it goes to those who need it than those who have it simply because they can afford it."

"Do you get _all_ of this stuff from the barons?" Sai inquired.

"All of it. The restrictions and bans don't apply to them, you know."

"And they don't notice?"

"You should see how much they throw out. The contents of one of their garbage cans could feed a family for a week. What's so bad about scavenging this stuff _before_ they waste it?"

"And could you get more?" Sai asked, "Of this ink and paints and such?"

"Absolutely!" The shopkeeper clapped his hands, delighted. "I have some people working in their houses... all they have to do is wait for their next big bulk order of scatter cushions of whatever, and slip a little Jet ink with the rest and in a week or two I'd have it here ready to be picked up for a fraction of its usual cost."

"Amazing," said Sai, tucking the box beneath his arm. He started for the ladder.

"So you don't plan to report me?" the shopkeeper asked hopefully, hurrying after him.

"For what?" Sai had already weighed his options. If he turned this man in, the best he would get was a proverbial pat on the head from his superiors, so it seemed to Sai that his most profitable course of action was to reap the benefits of the corruption that said superiors enjoyed, and keep this source of cheap food and art supplies open.

Danzou could not fault him for his amoral brand of logic; it was the one Root had installed in him after all.

* * *

The riverside was a very quiet place at midday. In other towns and villages, on a sunny day like this, one would have to beat others away with a stick if they wanted a whole park to themselves, but the echelons of Otafuku Gai wouldn't be seen dead out of bed before well into the afternoon. This left the best part of the day to the early risers like Kakashi and Sakura who left their hung-over teammates drooling in their beds to take a walk down the empty park paths. The spot they'd found beside the riverbank was beautifully secluded and sheltered. While Kakashi reclined and read his book, Sakura lay back on the soft grass and closed her eyes, soaking in the rays of the sun that she had begun to miss.

There was nothing for them to do now but wait. In another week Sakura would be able to take the first pregnancy test, and then they would find out if their efforts had paid off. In the mean time, they were back to not discussing it. Old habits were far too easy to slip back into, and neither of them had mentioned what had taken place between them on their last night together, or questioned if it had changed things between them.

Things evidently _had_ changed however. Kakashi was no longer planting himself in bars to avoid her, and Sakura had stopped shutting herself in her room to avoid everyone. This was a vast improvement for both of them, but to say things were back to the way they had been before would be a mistake. It was impossible to do the kind of things they had done and not feel different around one another, even if they could do their best to pretend, and the odd little hesitation or pause or sideways glance showed the pretence wasn't so perfect.

A splash made Sakura jump. She sat up, but all there was to see was a duck floating backside-up in the water, making a noise every time it dived. There was no reason to be so jumpy - they weren't doing anything wrong, but these days she couldn't shake the feeling that simply being alone with Kakashi was an illicit activity. They'd had a narrow escape when Jin had almost walked in on them _in flagrante_, and ever since then, Sakura had been especially wary of their chaperones. Idiots they might have been, but if they ever came to _suspect_ anything…?

Deciding the duck probably wasn't an agent of Danzou, Sakura gathered the remaining half of her sandwich and shredded the bread to throw into the river. The bird paddled over with an agreeable quack, gobbling down the bits of soggy bread with gusto.

"I thought you were saving that sandwich for later," Kakashi noted.

"The bachelor duck needed it more," she said, trying to see if she could land a piece on the duck's back.

"You shouldn't forget to eat. It isn't healthy," he cautioned her.

She didn't mind his concern as long as he didn't mither her to death. "You sound like a fussy old grandmother," she retorted, shooting him an annoyed glance, that ended up flicking over his long, solid frame. There was no confusing this man for an elderly woman, that was for sure.

Sakura quickly returned her attention to the duck, wishing she would stop noticing things like that. She'd been trying so hard not to acknowledge Kakashi as a _man_ since the beginning of their short, perfunctory affair, but it had been a whole lot harder since the night when, at least for a little while, they'd been real lovers.

She'd been right to want to resist that kind of involvement. She'd worried it would cloud her feelings and her judgement and that was exactly what was happening. But the discomfort and pain that she'd truly feared had not come. When she looked at Kakashi, she didn't see Hiroshi. That was all she could have asked for.

Her sandwiches reduced to crumbs, Sakura rolled up the foil and stuffed it into her pocket with a deep sigh. That was Kakashi's cue. He snapped his book shut and rose to his feet. "Come on. If we step lively we'll catch the matinee at the cinema."

"I'm not watching Icha Icha 3 again," Sakura warned. "Five times was enough."

"We won't," he said, and as Sakura got up he added, "they're showing the first two back-to-back."

Sakura made a sound in her throat like thunder, but a few hours in a dark room staring at a screen was as good a way to waste time as any. "If we must," she said, as if heavily put upon, and turned to leave.

She froze when Kakashi reached out to her, stroking his fingers through his hair. _Oh no_, she thought. This was exactly what she was afraid of. He'd gone and got a false expectation of their relationship and now-

But then Kakashi retracted his hand and showed her the strands of dead grass that had been caught in her hair with a faint smile. "Oh," she said, feeling like she'd missed the last step on a flight of stairs. "Thank you."

Like the perfect companionable gentleman, Kakashi gestured for her to lead the way. "Shall we?" he suggested, every bit her platonic friend.

Sakura looked at his gesturing hand and remembered the way it had run over her naked hip. She could probably count the calluses off the top of her head. Instead she squeezed her eyes shut briefly and turned away, heading back towards the path through the trees.

* * *

The Icha Icha trilogy was a classic. Kakashi couldn't understand Sakura's reluctance to witness such art in motion, but despite her insistence that she couldn't stand the films, once she was settled into graze-mode with a pitcher of soda in one hand and a box of popcorn in the other, she was a fairly content customer, even if she stared at the screen the way a dog stared at the TV –transfixed more by the moving pictures than the story.

In the dark theatre, they had chosen seats as close to the front as possible. Kakashi knew all too well what kind of films these places showed late at night and what kind of things the people in the back rows got up to. Even in the middle of the day there were some strange looking loners huddled around the back of the theatre, although Kakashi was pretty certain that anyone who went to see an Icha Icha marathon had impeccable taste and good moral hygiene.

He glanced over to make sure Sakura wasn't too bored. Her eyes were half-closed and she was munching steadily on the popcorn. When she noticed him looking at her she met his gaze questioningly. She offered him her popcorn –reluctantly, he felt – in case that was what he was after. It wasn't, but he accepted a handful and gave her a smile.

Kakashi was about to turn his attention back to the screen, where it deservedly belonged, when he glanced up to someone sitting in the half shadows at the very end of the last row. Another one of those peculiar characters… but the moment Kakashi glanced at him, the figure's head moved ever so slightly, as if until that moment he had been watching Kakashi.

Perturbed, Kakashi forced his gaze back to the movie, though he was no longer paying attention to the storyline. While Sakura slurped noisily at her soda, Kakashi discreetly polished the metal protector guarding the back of his glove with his sleeve until it shone as clearly as any mirror. A little subtle repositioning, under the guise of folding his arms, and Kakashi could see the reflected image of the figure in the protector.

He was _definitely_ watching them.

Most likely it was Jin or Ari, or someone else Danzou had sent. But it seemed strange that after weeks of no surveillance they would suddenly be tailed, unless something had happened to cause them to be suspicious in the eyes of their teammates. What if Jin had finally decided that knock on his head hadn't really been caused by falling over, drunk, as Kakashi kept telling him? What if someone had seen him and Sakura together, or leaving the love hotel?

Yet Jin and Ari weren't the only enemies they had in this place. What if it was Hiroshi? Or someone sent by Hiroshi?

What if it was just a regular pervert who was trying to check Sakura out?

Kakashi couldn't be sure until they left the theatre. Until the end of the film he kept up the pretence, laughing at the right moments and stealing Sakura's popcorn when she left it unguarded, but checked on the reflection in his metal protector every few moments to keep an eye on their admirer. As soon as the credits began to roll, he grabbed Sakura's hand and dragged her out of the theatre faster than an Icha Icha film deserved.

"What's up with you?" Sakura asked, jogging along behind him as they plunged through the queues for the next showing. "Don't you want to see Part Two?"

"I'll pass," he said, glancing over his shoulder once before pulling her through a set of doors into another dark theatre.

Sakura took one look at what was playing on the screen and blanched. "Um… it's ok, you know… I wouldn't say no to seeing another Icha Icha film. We don't have to watch… this."

Kakashi, who was busy peering back out the circular windows in one of the doors glanced over to see what she meant. "Oh." Porn.

"What are you looking at?" Sakura asked, noticing he was more interested in what was going on out in the corridor than what was happening on the screen. She came up beside him to squint through the second window.

"There was a guy back there… I think – there is he. Get down."

They both stepped back out of sight as the dark-haired man in the hood strode past the entrance of the theatre, heading for the exit. Once out of sight, they both poked their heads up again.

"What was that about?" Sakura asked. "You don't owe him money, do you?"

She was probably having flashbacks to her days with Tsunade. "That guy just walked out in the middle of an Icha Icha double bill," Kakashi pointed out to her. "He's obviously up to no good."

Sakura gave him a stupefied look. "Maybe he has standards."

He ignored the taunt. "He was watching us the entire time we were in there, and now he's probably trying to follow us."

Sakura blinked, and the significant silence that followed as she realised the implications of being tailed was spoiled a little by the keening orgasmic cries of the woman in the film. Kakashi did his best to ignore it.

"Someone working for Hiroshi?" she breathed. He imagined being tracked down by that man was pretty high on her list of fears right now.

"Maybe," he said, trying to sound reassuring. "Let's just go back to the inn and see if it's been compromised. We may have to move, although it's probably just Jin or Ari."

"Didn't look like Jin or Ari to me."

"Yeah, well, neither one of us know what they look like beneath those masks. Come on."

Every theatre had its fire escape, and together they slipped out into an alley through the emergency exit beneath the screen and made their way back to the inn along a convoluted path of the quietest streets. They saw no more suspicious figures looming in the shadows, and when they reached the inn, nothing appeared to have been disturbed, though neither Jin and Ari were anywhere to be found.

"I think we're safe here," Kakashi said.

"I don't like this," said Sakura, sitting upon her rolled up futon and biting down on her thumb nail without breaking it.

"I know…"

"That bitch has been in here _cleaning_ again," she sighed.

He snorted. "For a moment there I thought you might actually be worried about being followed."

"Oh, believe me, I don't like that either!" Restlessly, she rose and kicked her futon open and threw down her bedding as haphazardly as possible, like a hamster that couldn't be happy with her new clean cage until she'd completely rearranged her nest to be as messy and comfortable as possible. "Why would someone be following us? I mean, _could_ it be the two idiots? Why would they suddenly start doing their jobs? They haven't cared before about chaperoning us… unless, Jin actually saw us and remembers and-"

"Jin doesn't remember anything," he interrupted.

"How do you know?"

"He'd be insufferable if he did. He'd probably rather blackmail us first before bothering to report to Danzou."

Flopping down in her nest, Sakura resumed biting her nails. "Then what if it's someone working for Hiroshi? If he's discovered I'm still alive, I could see him sending someone after me to finish the job."

"Is he that vindictive?" Kakashi asked quietly.

"Yes," she said, with absolute certainty, and if anyone knew that man, Sakura did. She probably knew him better than his own family.

Kakashi sighed and rubbed his mouth through his mask. "Perhaps it's best if we leave here sooner rather than later," he said. "How many days till the end of your cycle?"

"About five," she said, frowning.

"Good." He nodded to himself. "You should take an early pregnancy test tomorrow."

Sakura's hands twisted in her lap. "Those aren't always accurate," she warned quietly.

"It doesn't matter. Whatever the result, we can use it as an excuse to go home, back to Konoha."

He saw her blink rapidly, computing the possibility that they would be able to leave as soon as tomorrow. Maybe she'd begun to think that she would never get out of this town? Or maybe she was leery of the prospect of taking the test? He had to admit… he wasn't sure he wanted to know the result. He wasn't even sure _which_ result he was hoping for.

"Ok", she said, nodding in bemusement after a long pause. "We'll do that."

Kakashi smiled supportively for her, and passed his hand over her head, ruffling her rosy locks despite her calmly disgruntled expression. He had to stop and pull himself back when he found his thoughts drifting back to how those beautiful locks had looked splayed out across the pillow when he had finally made her come.

He packed up a pack of cards from the window ledge. "Go fish?" he offered.

* * *

Admittedly, Sakura hadn't gotten much sleep that night. She blamed it on her full head and full bladder, after Kakashi had insisted she drink at least two glasses of water before bed. She was still awake when she heard Ari and Jin return in the early hours of the morning, stumbling around like a true pair of idiots down the corridor. Sakura reached for the kunai under her pillow and held it at the ready, but nine times out of ten, they never bothered her. They carried on past her door to the room they shared with Kakashi.

How he coped with such louts, she would never know, but she had the greatest respect for Kakashi's obviously god-like patience. However, he might have been just a selectively heavy sleeper.

She slept for a little while after that. She was too tired not to. But before the clock turned to seven, the insistent press of her bladder had become too much to tolerate. She rolled out of bed like a bloated seal and half hopped and tiptoed her way down the corridor to the bathroom.

It was almost within reach when someone stepped out in front of her.

" What, are you camping out the bathroom now?" she cursed Kakashi, dancing on the spot. "Out of my way!"

"Need to pee?" he asked, refusing to move.

"If you don't get out of my way, I can't be held responsible for what will happen!" she threatened.

"You might want this," he said, handing her a small white box. Sakura knew what it was without looking at it, because even in her state of desperation she could trust Kakashi to never forget a trifling detail like a pregnancy test.

"Maybe later," she said, trying to duck around him.

"Maybe now. You know it's most accurate first thing in the morning."

"Alright! Just don't stand outside the door or anything." Accepting the box, she finally managed to barge past him and shut herself into the bathroom.

In retrospect, it was a good thing she was desperate for the toilet or she may have ended up pacing the length of the bathroom at least fifty times before she considered even opening the pregnancy test box, as she had last time. It was like receiving her medic qualification exam results, and not wanting to open the envelope and remove all doubt about the result in case it was the one she didn't want. This time, however, there wasn't a result _wanted_. There was no 'passing' or 'failing' a pregnancy test; you were either pregnant or you weren't, and neither option appealed to Sakura.

The feeling that all her supposed 'choices' converged into one lump of hopelessness removed much of her hesitation. What was there to fear when there was nothing to look forward to? She tore the box open and blitzed through the instructions which were always the same. Here was a stick: piss on the stick.

It was only when the deed was done and the 120 second countdown began that Sakura started to feel anxious. She set the test down on the sink, picked it up again, walked to the door, and then walked back, placing the test face down on the toilet seat instead.

Two minutes must have come and gone, and Sakura played with the ends of her hair, trying to work up the courage to pick the test up again. _Just get it over with,_ she told herself sternly, and flinched – almost reaching for the white stick but failing. _It's not like it matters which result you get._

She must have been waiting too long. Kakashi tapped on the door. "Everything alright in there?"

"I thought I told you not to stand outside?" she shot back.

"I'm not," he replied, "You've been in there for ten minutes. How long does the test take?"

That got to her. Nothing gave her courage like the need to put on a strong, capable front for Kakashi. She snatched up the test at once and stared at the indicator for a few seconds before she could fathom its meaning.

And then Sakura learnt she had been wrong. It did matter, and she had not realised how desperately she had been needing to see that little blue line until it was there and her knees were threatening to buckle beneath the powerful wave of relief. Because there really was no other word to describe it. A relief…

It was a relief.

Slowly she ditched the stick into the bin and calmly unlocked the door before Kakashi could begin knocking again. "It's ok," she said, noticing his taut expression. "It worked. I'm pregnant."

The second she said it, the cooling relief that had soothed her fled, replaced instead by a gu-churning sensation that rose up like nausea. The corridor spun and she pressed a hand to her head as if staving off the most sudden and violent migraine of her life. "Oh god," she gasped, short of breath all of a sudden. "I'm pregnant…"

* * *

Ari and Jin were sceptical at first. They were naturally suspicious of anything Sakura claimed, but even they couldn't deny the impartial readings on the pregnancy test.

Jin might have seemed… almost disappointed. His time of gadding around with strippers and prostitutes and tormenting Sakura on a daily basis was coming to a close, and his carefully feigned indifference was far too cold to be genuine. Ari, by contrast, seemed perfectly happy to leave Otafuku Gai.

"That maid," he said, "was beginning to get clingy anyway."

"So much for being _sterile,"_ Jin sneered at Sakura as he pushed past her abruptly. For once she barely reacted; no glaring, no teeth grinding, no threats being spat out. It wasn't like she could correct him and protest that she hadn't lied about Hiroshi, but this time Sakura looked as if she thought she might have deserved Jin's snide remarks.

"I suggest we all pack our bags. I'd like to be out of here before noon," Kakashi said, and watched Sakura drift back to her room like an automaton. Was she really that calm, or was she in shock? He knew that a good man would have gone after her, to comfort or reassure her, but right now he assumed that she wanted to be alone – because that was exactly what he wanted. As much as he'd tried to prepare himself for this almost inevitable news, it still struck him like a sledgehammer. To the gut.

When they went back to their respective rooms, Kakashi slipped away for some air. The morning was crisp and blessedly cool on his face, and the streets were quiet enough to provide a sense of peace, but not so quiet he stood out. What was one more dead-eyed roughed up man wandering the streets of Otafuku Gai?

There were three things they said about this town. You came here either to lose your virginity, your money, or yourself. If you stayed too long you lost them all, and everything after that too.

Well, he had survived, and most importantly, so had Sakura. The long weeks of standing helplessly by while his young friend was disassembled and misused, to become the tool Danzou desired her to be and nothing more. Well, now they had cheated the system, and cheated the Hokage. Mission accomplished, they were going home, traitors and subverters. Their pyrrhic victory was a hollow one.

But they were alive, and they were going home, and although they would keep tapping to the Hokage's tune, one day the opportunity to take back the village would be theirs. And whatever child was born of this union would never have to know tyranny.

Whatever child…

Kakashi pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes until lights flashed against his eyelids. He couldn't undo what was now done, and he had to face the fact he was complicit in creating a child for convenience, and whether or not it grew up to see another revolution that would free Konoha, what kind of life had he condemned it to? Even if a legitimate Hokage was restored, and the people who had fled returned, and everything was back to how it had been before… it would never be the same. Not for him, and certainly not for Sakura.

When his hands dropped from his face, he took a moment to steel himself. There was packing to be done, however minimal, and then they would be returning to Konoha. They'd be reporting to Danzou by the end of the day, and whether their scheme had truly saved them would be decided then. In the mean time, he had to bury his fears for the future. Sakura had to see he was confident about what they were doing, even if that was far from the truth.

He was about to turn back in the direction of the inn when he noticed, too late, that he was being watched. At the mouth of an alley stood the dark-haired man he had seen at the theatre, and no longer was he pretending to appear to be just another bystander. He was staring at Kakashi just as boldly as Kakashi stared back.

A slight jerk of the head, beckoning him, and the figure vanished back into the alley out of sight.

For several moments Kakashi remained firmly planted in the middle of the street. Basic training screamed that you did not follow your stalkers into dark, secluded places where the possibility of being surrounded and overwhelmed were high. But those intending you harm didn't usually act _this_ audaciously.

Kakashi began to move toward the alley. Yes, it might have been a trap, and if so it was a damn blatant one, but he'd walked into others before and lived to tell the tale. If this was someone who intended Sakura harm, it might just as easily be the perfect opportunity to dispatch them.

But the alley was empty. Kakashi followed it till it ended in a high brick wall, garbage bags piled high and well rotted. He didn't sense anyone nearby but he looked around carefully. If his stalker hadn't scaled the walls and fled over the rooftops, the only place he could have gone was through the old wooden door to his right that had been left slightly ajar… invitingly so.

_Definitely a trap,_ he thought with a sigh_._

That wasn't going to stop him from strolling right into it. He was not in the mood to be trifled with today, of all days, and if anyone planned to jump him on the other side of that door he would – for the first and last time – unleash upon them the turbulent anger and violence that he'd had to hold in check ever since Danzou had first approached him to take part in his inhumane directives.

Placing a few fingers to the brass handle, Kakashi probed for traps with a little exploratory chakra. If there was any nasty surprise that would be set off by opening the door, like an exploding tag, the crackling clash of chakra would warn him. Feeling nothing, however, Kakashi tentatively pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness-

Instantly, something smacked him on the head. The blow wasn't hard, but it was enough to make Kakashi stiffen and snatch his kunai from its holster to ward off the next assault. He'd sensed nothing – no intent, no presence – who or what had just conked him?

The offending weapon lay on the ground, and he crouched slowly to pick it up, scowling in bewilderment when he realised what it was.

"A shoe…?"

"You're _so_ easy! I can't believe you still fall for that!"

The dark haired man came forward into the light from the door and slapped a light switch on the wall to fill the storage room with stark, flickering light. That was when Kakashi realised he didn't have dark hair at all. He was a blond. And now he had whisker marks on his cheeks…

"Naruto?" He knew it was true but still he couldn't help sounding uncertain.

"Do you know how hard you are to find, Sensei?" Naruto was grinning at him like a lunatic, making it hard to believe he was one of the most hunted men on the continent. "I had to bribe at least three people back in Konoha before I got even the vaguest idea of where you'd been sent out, and Otafuku Gai ain't exactly a small place to comb. When I finally did find you yesterday at the cinema, I could have sworn you actually tried to ditch me. Can I have my shoe back, please?"

"That was you?" Kakashi said, obligingly handing the shoe back that Naruto had placed above the door. "Why didn't you come over?"

"I had to make sure you were alone. Danzou's got eyes everywhere you know, and I've seen the two masked men hanging around you two. They're a pain to get round." As Naruto hopped, jamming his lost shoe on, Kakashi examined him carefully. If not for his distinguishing features it would have been hard to recognise him after all these years. It might have been easy to mistake him for his father than his younger self. "But no big deal. I'm here now."

"Right…"

"You did try to contact me, right? I got the message you needed to see me."

Kakashi shook his head faintly. "Naruto, that was _months _ago."

"And I only got the message a couple of weeks back," Naruto said defensively. "I wish I could give you a more direct method of contact, but you know how easy it is for them to track those sorts of things. What was it you wanted, anyway? I know you don't take risks like that for nothing."

Kakashi was still lost for words – and thoughts. Here was Naruto in the flesh after he'd had to convince himself _and_ Sakura that contacting him was so close to impossible that it was hardly worth the risk trying. He'd never gotten his hopes up. He hadn't even thought about the possibility that Naruto would eventually show up or he never would have accepted Sakura's proposal.

Even when masked, his students had always demonstrated an unnerving capacity to read his face without ever actually seeing it. "You're not pleased to see me, are you?" Naruto observed sadly.

"No, that's not it," Kakashi said quickly. "I only… _really_ wish you had gotten here sooner."

"Why?" Naruto's face began to harden with concern. "What's wrong?"

It was a simple enough question, but Kakashi didn't know how to begin explaining all the things that were wrong in the world and how Naruto's appearance now only further complicated matters. But he was spared formulating any insultingly sanitised explanation of Sakura's mission when they both heard soft footsteps on the moist gravel of the alley, coming closer.

Naruto didn't react. However, Kakashi spun abruptly and moved directly in front of Naruto to shield him from sight and attack if need be. If it was Jin or Ari, consequences be damned, he would have to kill them.

Yet the hand that pushed the door wider was feminine… and in stepped Sakura.

Kakashi might have preferred one of the idiots.

She stared at him, non-plusssed, then her gaze swept the room full of boxes and storage containers. "Kakashi?" she murmured inquiringly. "What are you doing in here?"

Kakashi felt the shove as Naruto barged past him. No wall or person would separate him from his old teammate, and with a jubilant cry of, "Sakura-chan!" he threw his arms around her with all the delight Kakashi had ever seen him muster, every bit of it as genuine and whole-hearted as everything else Naruto said and did.

And while Kakashi saw the shock register on Sakura's face a second before she accepted the embrace, she didn't once smile.

And if she couldn't summon it for her best friend, he knew her smile was gone for good.

* * *

TBC


	10. Sunlight

**Scarlet Scroll**

Sunlight

* * *

"You look so different, Sakura-chan!"

Sakura stood back as far as Naruto's arms would allow and looked her old friend up and down. "You're one to talk," she told him, noticing he'd had to temerity to grow yet again. Not only that, his face had lost the round boyishness she was used to, and she could only assume he hadn't been eating enough, or that this was perhaps what happened without his steady diet of ramen. Then again, he might have just finally grown up. No matter what, he still grinned like an idiot, reassuring her that no matter how bad things had gotten for him, he was still the boy who'd fled Konoha with a wink and a wave and a promise that he'd come back when it was time to become Hokage.

Sakura wished she could say the same about herself.

However, there were more important things to address than superficial changes. "What are you doing here, Naruto?" she asked, before letting her gaze slide to Kakashi. "What are _you_ doing here, for that matter?"

Kakashi lifted his chin, choosing to ignore her question. "Were you followed?" he asked shortly.

"I don't know," she responded coolly, "I didn't realise you were off to a clandestine meeting when I followed you. Had I known I might have thought to check, so maybe you should have told me?"

"It's not Kakashi-sensei's fault, Sakura-chan," Naruto said quickly. "I took him by surprise."

She stared at him, horrified. "Naruto, you can't just pop around for a surprise chat when you feel like it! You have the whole village out to get you and two agents of Root could be heading this way as we speak. It's nice to see you, but it's not worth the risk of being caught."

He held up his hands. "Chill, Sakura-chan!" he cried out. "Kakashi-sensei asked me to come. Right, Sensei?"

"You asked him to come?" Sakura repeated, looking to an uncomfortable Kakashi for confirmation. What the hell had he been thinking? More importantly, _how_ had he been able to contact the number one untraceable ninja?

"Before we began the mission, I tried to get a message to Naruto for help. I didn't think he'd really receive it... not after so much time," Kakashi sighed and dragged the nail of his thumb across his eyebrow. "If I'd known he would come, I swear to you Sakura, I wouldn't have... I wouldn't have agreed to it."

Naruto's smile began to fade in the midst of confusion. He looked between his former teammates. "Well, it's ok," he said. "I'm here now. What was it you guys wanted?"

His question was met with a resounding silence. Sakura went so still she might have even stopped breathing while Kakashi's gaze had dropped to floor and stuck there. Neither made any attempt to answer the question, and Naruto felt like one trapped between two grinding stones. "What?" he demanded, brows knitting together. "What aren't you telling me? Has someone died?"

"Nothing as bad as that," Kakashi reassured him, though Sakura's disbelieving scoff said otherwise.

"Ok," Naruto said slowly, unconsciously inching out from between them. "What was it you wanted from me?"

Kakashi lifted his hand as if to gesticulate, then dropped it was a defeated sigh. "I wanted to know if you could get Sakura out of Konoha," he said. "If you could take her with you."

"Why?" he spun to look back at Sakura. "Did something happen? What's wrong?"

"There's no point now," she said, blinking flatly. "It's too late."

"It's _not_ too late," Kakashi told her. "You could leave with Naruto right now-"

"You can't," she interrupted, voice struggling to remain even. "You can't put me through all this and the tell me there was a way out all along! I didn't go with Naruto in the first place because I was scared I'd hold him back and get us both killed, you think I'm going to be able to keep up with him _now_?"

"I wanted you to have the choice," he said, his faint tone pleading with her. "But I gave up hope that he would come in time."

Naruto folded his arms loosely. "Look, guys, I kinda took a big risk coming here. Do you mind telling me what's going on?"

Like a diver about to take the final leap, Sakura sucked in a breath. "A mission," she told him shortly. "But Kakashi was mistaken. I'm sorry he wasted your time."

Maybe Kakashi was a little stung by her words, for he looked at her silently for a moment before turning back to Naruto. "I have to check on our two idiot Root escorts and make sure they didn't follow us. I'm sorry I can't stay and catch up but I'm sure you two have a lot to say to one another, so I'll say goodbye now."

He reached up and brushed his hand over Naruto's head affection as he moved past them, even though Naruto was almost as tall as his Sensei now. And as Kakashi slipped out, Naruto turned back to Sakura, bemusement clouding his features. "Have you two fallen out over something?" he asked.

"A little bit," she admitted.

"It must be serious, you called him 'Kakashi'."

"Did I?" She no longer noticed these things. How she felt towards Kakashi was so muddled these days that the appropriate form of address escaped her. Sometimes it was only right and natural that she keep adding 'sensei' to his name, but at other times it was impossible to pretend he was still a teacher to her. "Don't worry about it, Naruto. Things are a bit tense at the moment."

The way he stared at her made her uncomfortable. It was the same way Kakashi looked when she was doing a poor job disguising her feelings and he pitied her too much to say anything. But Naruto didn't understand the same way. He didn't know what she was going through. "I know you keep saying you'll slow me down," he said, "but if you want to come with me, I don't mind. In fact, it'll be totally cool. I'm going to Suna next – Gaara's a complete stick in the mud when it comes to rallying support, always saying he's got to put his village first – but maybe I can talk them into letting you borrow some of Chiyo's study scrolls. I know how much you admire her techniques, and those guys still remember you and what you did for them."

Sakura's throat was threatening to closed over the lump that had risen. She swallowed and measured her breaths, determined to remain strong. "Maybe one day I'll get to go there again," she said quietly, "but a place like Suna is crawling with Root spies. You might be able to avoid capture with brute force if all else fails, but don't pretend that if I went with you it wouldn't be a case of you having to protect me every step of the way."

He grinned. "I don't mind-"

"I do," she said. "It was always safer that I remain in Konoha, and that's the only place I can be of use to you. You need supporters at home, Naruto."

"It would be nice to have company though," he sighed. "What with everyone wanting to catch me, it's getting kind of lonely."

"Who are you trying to kid, Naruto?" she scolded without ire. "You make friends wherever you go. It's like a supernatural power you have, I swear..."

"Yeah, but some places are pretty suspicious of a guy travelling alone. Couples are always less conspicuous," he said, getting a very old and very familiar glint in his eyes. "Hey, Sakura, hey, we could pretend to be, like, married."

Married? Sakura almost smiled. A little bundle of joy on the way would compliment that act quite nicely... but they were hardly an inconspicuous pair, and lugging around a pregnant woman was a sure way to shorten his days of freedom. "I don't think Hinata would forgive me," she told him mildly.

"Ha, yeah... that's true," he scratched his head, his thoughts drifting away as a faint pink tinge touched his cheeks.

Hinata's passionate declaration of love had literally been the talk of the town in the days after Pain's invasion, but since that moment events had conspired to keep them apart. Danzou had turned public opinion against Naruto so easily after Tsunade had passed away, and Hinata – already so painfully sensitive and shy – had withdrawn after Naruto had departed without ever once getting the chance to speak to her.

Sakura didn't know how her friend felt about the diffident Hyuuga, but bringing her up was a sure way to distract him from his other line of pursuit, and she sure as hell wasn't going to let him in on the truth and burst the illusion he'd wove around himself that his friends were fine and safe and there would always be hope. In today's climate, someone as positive and sweet-natured as Naruto had to be protected. If the world was allowed to drag him down to their level, the world would lose something very important.

"I'm glad I got the chance to see you again," she said, wondering as she said it if it would be the last time they would see each other for years. Or for ever. "You're kind of cute now, Naruto."

His pink cheeks nearly developed a full blaze of red. "Well, you were always beautiful," he muttered, chucking her jaw with a thumb and forefinger. "But... you look sadder these days too, Sakura-chan."

She tried to smile to reassure him, but her mouth felt weak and it came off more as a pained grimace. "Don't worry about me," she said. "I'm not the one with multiple divisions of Hunter nin on my tail."

Catching his hand, she squeezed it. "You should go before they come looking for me."

"Yeah." He nodded, but before either of them stepped away he launched forward, pulling her close in a tight embrace.

It was only Naruto, doing what Naruto did best, but in that split second Sakura felt a stab of pure panic shoot through her heart. He must have hugged her dozens of times –if not hundreds of times in the past, and never before had his arms felt transformed into a cage, like a vice attempting to smother her. She held herself rigid, battling the impulse to squirm free, or just collapse against him and cry. _It was only Naruto_.

She'd messed herself up pretty badly if her best friend's body terrified her. It felt like an excruciatingly prolonged minute before he drew back, frowning down at her slightly as if he sensed something was wrong with her. She could break down and apologise... explain everything to him.

Instead she lifted her head and gave him a nod with an assurance and courage she just didn't possess. "Goodbye, Naruto."

Only when his hands left her shoulders did she finally feel free to breathe. Then without a word he simply disappeared.

And Sakura was finally alone once more.

She took that moment for herself, dabbing at her eyes to check for treacherous moisture and straightening her dress in case it had been rumpled during Naruto's hug. When she was sure she presented an ordinary, if _false,_ image to the world, she stepped out of the dim little storage room into the alley.

Kakashi hadn't gone all that far; he was standing against the wall only a few feet away. "You didn't tell him," he said.

_Eavesdropper,_ she sighed inwardly. "No."

"He's going to find out," he cautioned. "It's not something you can hide."

"He doesn't have to know the truth," she said. "No one has to tell him about Hiroshi. I don't think he should ever learn about us."

Kakashi pushed away from the wall, and walked around her. He stopped short, just close enough to hear his grunt. "You're right. He can't know about this. Danzou will give you an official story to stick to... this'll be his truth as well as everyone else's."

How long could one live with such an enormous lie? Sakura wondered, but she had no answer. "Do you think we did the right thing?" she asked bleakly.

Kakashi didn't have any answers either. "I can't think about it anymore."

He turned and began to walk away, no doubt to catch up with Jin and Ari to start the long trip home. Sakura followed like a shadow and decided it was the last time she would ever ask. What was done was done, and the consequences were bridges they would have to figure out how to cross when they came.

* * *

The journey back to Konoha was longer than she'd anticipated on account of Kakashi forcing them to stop repeatedly for rests. This was for Sakura's benefit, he said. In 'her condition' hard travel wasn't advisable, even if Sakura herself felt no different than usual. That morning a little plastic stick had informed her she was pregnant, and if not for that she wouldn't have known. When she thought of all the classic symptoms of pregnancy she'd read in books or seen in television dramas, like morning sickness, bloating, _glowing_, she knew she had none of them. Maybe that would come later, she thought. And maybe then she would be used to the idea.

Meanwhile, the constant stops did nothing for her except try her patience. She'd thought she would be glad of the day she returned to Konoha, but she found that although she could leave Otafuku Gai without a backward glance, she wasn't looking forward to seeing her old home and friends either. She'd spent nearly twenty years carving out her place in Konoha, and now that she was returning there she was conscious of the fact she had changed and might no longer fit. What then? How would she explain all this to her mother? To her friends?

Every step made her feet feel heavier and the temptation to break away and flee into the forest was one with which she flirted half-heartedly. Yet when every time Kakashi called for a break and forced her to sit and take refreshments, she felt arrested. There was no desire to go on and still she had no desire to delay the inevitable.

She just wanted it all to be over with.

At least the two idiots didn't bother them much. They spent the entire trip walking a good few hundred yards ahead as if they were a little more homesick than either would admit, and the distance put them a long way out of earshot should Kakashi and Sakura have felt the need to discuss anything sensitive. Yet they didn't. In fact they didn't talk at all. Aside from suggestions of direction and when to pause, the journey was silent and neither appeared to notice. They each had their own thoughts to contend with. Feelings, normally such subdued and easily managed things, were running too high to trust speaking.

By the time they reached the gates of Konoha, Sakura just felt drained. She let the guards at the checkpoint poke and prod her, and let them needlessly quibble over the type of ink on her passport. They let through two established Root agents like Jin and Ari without much trouble, but she didn't care if they delayed her and Kakashi. They were only making the two idiots wait for them, and by extension, the Hokage himself.

When they were finally allowed through, Sakura got the sense of being _marched_ to the Hokage tower. Her three male escorts closed around and cut through crowds like the prow of a ship through water. Sakura saw no one she recognised because she kept her gaze focused on the back of Kakashi's vest, and if anyone saw her she at least did not have to look them in the eye just yet.

At the Hokage tower they were ushered up the stairs and past the statue-like forms of the Root guards that lined the hallways, apparently paid to do nothing but stand around and look intimidating.

It was at this point that Sakura noticed a faintly amusing transformation had come over Jin and Ari. On the mission they had acted without fail like two spiteful little boys, full of obnoxious jokes and juvenile attitudes. In the Hokage tower they became the drones they had been forged to be, speaking to other drones in the same flat monotone they all communicated in, as if they had been successfully purged of all their emotions as their training demanded. When they reached the ante-chamber outside the Hokage's reception room where they would wait until being called, the two idiots took up station against the wall.

Sakura actually scoffed out loud at how ridiculous the whole thing was, but no one looked at her. They had to pretend they were so emotionless they couldn't even respond to her derision anymore.

And as usual Danzou, despite being informed of their arrival and obviously not busy, kept them waiting beyond a reasonable time. Sakura refused to show her impatience and sat on the bench against the wall without moving while Kakashi paced casually before her as if bored. He was a much better actor than her. Then again, he'd been in this program a lot longer.

She wondered how many times he'd been here with other women, waiting to be debriefed after a 'successful' mission.

But of course this time was different. There was no success here; the mission had been gravely compromised and the penalty for that didn't bear thinking about. They should have been nervous wrecks... and yet, Sakura felt remarkably calm right now. She'd been through too much and faced all her fears. An old man with gout didn't scare her anymore.

At last the doors were opened to Danzou's little throne room and they were escorted into the atmospherically dim chamber. The semi-circle of seats were full again today, and Sakura sank listlessly into the full kowtowing posture Danzou demanded. Kakashi didn't, however. That was interesting. Did he hold a higher position in Danzou's regime than she'd realised, or was he actually flaunting the rules?

"I am told your mission was a success," she heard Danzou say, an unidentified tone colouring his words. "Rise."

Sakura stood obediently and looked at Danzou.

He seemed amused with himself. "Of course, we will have to be sure," he went on, rising to his feet to approach them. While he was looking at Sakura she was sure he would address her, but she wasn't all that surprised when he moved past her and spoke to Kakashi as if she was no more than a witless animal who had been trotted out for show. "Did you find her performance adequate?"

Whether Danzou knew it or not, there could easily have been a double meaning to his question.

Kakashi remained impassive, staring into the distance like he too might have been Root's star pupil. "She is exemplary," he said evenly.

"Any complications with the target?" Danzou asked him.

"No, sir," Kakashi answered. "He did at one point attempt to murder Sakura and soon after fled, but fortunately the mission had already been completed."

"Did he realise her identity?"

"No, sir. I imagine he attempted to murder her because he was merely a violent psychopath, as I'm sure you are well aware of, Hokage-sama." The faint insinuation that Danzou had chosen Hiroshi for this trait specifically hung in the air like an elephant trying to hide in the corner.

Thankfully, Danzou was going to ignore it. "Good. Then I expect a full write-up within a week, and we shall see about moving you onto a new subject."

Kakashi might have inhaled a little sharply at this. Danzou didn't notice, as he'd already turned his attention back to Sakura. "You have served your village admirably," he said, like a proud grandfather. "You will be richly rewarded for your contribution. Once you are checked out by our private physician and your condition is confirmed, you will receive a five percent raise. Once the pregnancy is established in six months or so, you will be given new accommodation to suit your change in circumstance and you'll be put on fully paid maternity leave for the following year. Do you find this acceptable?"

It was a paltry consolation for being whored out against her will. Like Kakashi, she steeled herself to show nothing of her disgust. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

"Oh," added Danzou, as if he'd remembered something, "and one other thing too..."

His hand lashed out faster than she could follow, seizing her by the throat and jerking her forward with a crushing grip. Sakura's heart nearly exploded in panic. _He knew!_

Beside her she thought she saw Kakashi move, as if to interfere, then subside just as quickly as every other guard in the room moved their hands warningly to their weapons. He already knew what was going to happen, it seemed.

"You are not permitted to talk about this pregnancy for at least three more months," Danzou said, his foul breath stifling her airways. "When you do speak of it to your friends and family and acquaintances, you will explain you were a careless slut who got knocked up on her mission. Do you understand?"

She couldn't answer even if she wanted to. In retrospect that was a good thing. If she'd been able to move her jaw she would have spat on him.

It was then that she felt something piercing her throat. Little pain, but with the viscosity of tar she felt it invade her and crawl up her trachea, coating everything and winding around her tongue till she thought she was about to choke. She closed her eyes and fought for breath.

Danzou pulled her ever closer. "Now you will make me a promise," he told her, "and with the power of this binding jutsu you will keep it till the day you die. I will make certain of it."

Sakura gagged, but she gave up thoughts of trying to twist free. She knew what this was. Sai had explained it to her before, and she knew that whatever promise she was bound to next would either cripple or kill her if she tried to break it. Goddamn it, why hadn't Kakashi warned her?

"Haruno Sakura. You must vow to me and upon pain of death, that you will never reveal to anyone the true identity of your child's father."

Sakura's eyes flashed open, and if there was a flicker of triumph in them it was too brief for Danzou to witness. But suddenly she felt like laughing. _What an old fool he was!_

"I vow it," she told him thickly.

Her reward was a sharp burning pain on the back of her tongue that took her breath away for a moment. Danzou released her so suddenly she would have slumped to the floor if Kakashi hadn't caught her elbow.

"Return to your work," Danzou said dismissively, settling back in his chair. "Your handler will arrange your appointments and any concerns you might have should be addressed to him."

If there was ever going to be a cue to leave, that was it. Sakura felt Kakashi manoeuvring her firmly towards the exit, walking fast and forcing her to keep up. Her throat was burning with the effects of the binding jutsu and when she tried to speak all that came out was a gasp of air.

"You won't be able to speak for a while," Kakashi muttered to her as they descended the stairs past lines of guards. "I'm sorry, he's not normally that rough. I wasn't prepared."

"Nice to be the exception," she whispered. But if Danzou thought he had her ground beneath his foot, he was mistaken. He hadn't had her silenced so much as ensured she could never reveal the fact that she'd deceived him.

Once outside the tower, Kakashi didn't stop. There were still too many Root ANBU around the Hokage's place of business and he didn't appear content to converse anywhere near them. Sakura went along with it. After two months of being ushered around like a child who couldn't be trusted to take care of herself, she was used to it. He finally stopped outside the gates of a community allotment. There was less human traffic around there and there were only the runner-beans to overhear them.

"Take some cough syrup and you'll be fine," he said, watching her rub her throat ruefully.

"Easy for you to say," she rasped.

He shrugged. "I've already been bound. Almost everyone in the program is."

"So, my hazing ritual basically." She tried to clear her throat but she still sounded like her voice box had been put through a shredder. "Nice to feel like one of the gang at last."

Kakashi was watching her more closely than she cared for. "You won't be able to tell anyone I'm the father now."

"Isn't that for the best?" she asked. "If I can't tell anyone the truth it'll remain between us, so maybe you shouldn't think of yourself as the father anymore. As far as anyone else in this program is concerned, Hiroshi fathered it and we have to act like that's true. And maybe it is? Don't feel as if you have an obligation to me or any child... because you don't."

He sighed and eased back on one foot. "What do you plan to do now?"

"Go home?" Sakura shrugged. "Have some cough syrup. What else is there to do?"

"I can walk you," he offered.

She gave him a patient look. "You babysat me for two months, give it a rest. I can remember where I live-"

"You're back!"

Sakura's vision filled with blonde and she took a startled step backward only to bounce against the inconveniently placed trashcan behind her. But it was not herself who was under attack; it was Kakashi.

"I thought that was you," the woman cried in greeting, and Sakura was strongly reminded of a golden Labrador greeting its long lost owner. If she'd had a tail it would have been wagging. It was an unusual reaction for someone like Kakashi to inspire, and Sakura stared at her in bald suspicion. Attractive, blonde, blue-eyed, and pretty enough to get away with a bright shade of red lipstick. Curvy as hell, tall, and speaking with a husky, throbbing voice that would best be served narrating adverts about chocolate. "Did you just get back from your mission?"

Sakura turned her wide-eyes on Kakashi.

"Kimiko," he greeted uncertainly. "Hi."

"I see my charm kept you safe," she said flirtatiously, and reached up to fetch out the golden chain around his neck – the one with the little charm shaped like the character for "Ki".

A wave of shock prickled though Sakura, leaving her numb and feeling so far away from what she was seeing. Her hands reached discreetly behind her back to tug her sleeve down over the jade bracelet she was wearing.

"Kimiko," Kakashi said, taking her hand to draw it away from the chain. "This is Sakura, my student."

Not so long ago she had been upgraded to 'friend'. Was this some kind of demotion? Sakura didn't even try to return Kimiko's friendly greeting and bob, she just stared at her.

"She's lost her voice," Kakashi explained hastily.

"Oh, you poor thing. I heard there was a bout of laryngitis going around," fussed Kimiko sympathetically. "I didn't mean to interrupt if you were talking business, but when I saw you, Kakashi, I thought I should come over. See if you still remembered me."

"Of course." He smiled vaguely. Soft and sincere, and Sakura didn't think she'd ever seen him look that way at anyone before.

"And, well, if you're not too tired... maybe you'd like to go to dinner tonight?" Kimiko asked, wringing her fingers anxiously.

Kakashi looked at Sakura hesitantly. She could see what he was thinking and felt his pity, and knew that he was gearing up to politely turn this woman down at such an awkward moment. Sakura lashed out rather harder than she meant to, striking Kakashi's arm with the back of her hand. She didn't say anything but she didn't need to; her stupefied expression said it all. He looked back at Kimiko. "I'd like that," he said.

With a blush, Kimiko ducked her head, pleased.

How quickly Sakura suddenly felt like a trespasser, and how idiotically blind she'd been. Of course the charm around his neck was from a lover. Why had she never realised that? She was obviously his type – glamorous yet down to earth, and matching him so perfectly they might as well have been designed for one another. Her type was made for his type and anyone looking at the two of them could see it. But he had never once mentioned to Sakura that he had a lover. Had she known would she ever have asked him to...

Could what they'd done even be considered unfaithful?

"I should go," Sakura rasped, and without waiting to see Kakashi's reaction she turned and began to walk away.

For the first time in weeks she could go wherever she wanted, and no one would be following her or watching her. It had been so long since she'd had such a small, simple freedom that it was no wonder she felt a little overwhelmed, like she was walking aimlessly into a pitch black wilderness in the middle of her own home village.

* * *

"Would you believe me if I said I'd missed you?"

"I guess I'd wonder what ulterior motive you had."

Kimiko laughed gently and laced her fingers together with his. "I missed your company, is that so hard to believe?"

"Most of my friends would say so, yes," Kakashi told her.

"You're too hard on yourself."

Their gentle, easy courtship had been something Kakashi had prized before this last mission, and it seemed all too easy to pick up where they'd left off. A few months ago he had looked at this woman and wondered if she was the 'one', and decided he didn't mind going along with things and seeing where they led. If it was to a detached house, a marriage and kids, that would have suited him fine. Normality was something he had begun to crave in recent years, and Kimiko was stable enough and interesting enough to suit him for the rest of his life – however long or short that proved to be.

But now her flirting affections made him uneasy. He couldn't shake the feeling he had betrayed her, though he told himself he had only done what he had to with Sakura. And from the look on Sakura's face, he wondered if he had betrayed her too.

Perhaps normality was not something he deserved anymore.

"Did you miss me, Kakashi?" Kimiko asked invitingly.

"Of course," he replied, a little too automatically to sound believable. She looked at him curiously before tilting her head.

"It's ok if you don't want to come to dinner tonight," she said. "I'll understand."

He shook his head quickly. "No – I want to. I'm just burned out that's all. The mission was a little hard."

"Alright," she said. "But if you're burned out, you probably need to rest. Let's have dinner next week? At my place?"

He smiled. "That would be nice."

"I'll make you my continental special, a secret recipe handed down in my family for generations, more prized than any jutsu," Kimiko declared. "I hear a way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I'll make sure you don't forget me again."

"I didn't forget you," he told her, lifting his hand to tuck her blonde locks behind her ear. "I thought about you a lot, actually... and I missed you."

A flush of pleasure tinged her high cheekbones and she leaned into his hand. "I hope you don't think I'm being too forward, Kakashi, but... may I kiss you?"

He hesitated. Was it really alright to carry on with one woman while another was pregnant with his child? Sakura may have made it abundantly clear that he was not to consider himself the father, and if he was sensible he would take that advice to heart and get on with his life as if this mission had never happened, as would be expected of him. But it wasn't just a matter of keeping up appearances... he wanted to accept Kimiko's advances, whether he deserved them or not.

After a moment he nodded. With a fire flickering in her eyes she slipped his mask off his chin and stepped forward. She was tall enough to kiss him without standing on tip-toes as Sakura would have needed to do, but unlike Sakura she at least was willing to kiss him. He could detect the scent of her lipstick; such a subtle, feminine smell that mingled with an expensive and understated perfume. Sakura hadn't worn make-up when she wasn't with Hiroshi, and when she'd been with Kakashi, the smell of her body had never been obscured. The only artificial scent on her skin had been the mild aroma of the inn's cheap bar of soap.

He broke the kiss a little guiltily. Kissing one woman while thinking far too much of another was pretty low for Kakashi's standards, even if Kimiko couldn't possibly know. She seemed satisfied anyway, stroking his cheek like it was the first time she'd seen his face. Maybe it was?

"You seem a little preoccupied," she commented, licking her lips and drawing his attention to the lipstick that was now probably smeared across his mouth as well. "Are you thinking about your mission?"

Kakashi nodded. It was essentially true, he thought.

"Then I should leave you be," she said, with a wry smile. "I'll catch you later, ok?"

"Goodbye, Kimiko."

With their hands still joined, she stepped away until she reached the limit of their arms length. She squeezed her fingers around his for a beat, then with a smile she released him and went on her way, bouncing more than usual with every step.

Kakashi watched her walk away – or more specifically watched her derriere – until she was no longer in sight. Then he turned, and absently caught the bars of the allotment gate as he looked out over the hodgepodge garden of flowers and vegetables. It was a peaceful sight. After Konoha had been rebuilt and restructured, Konoha had lost a lot of its old charm to the hasty erection of emergency housing. What had once been a very green district was now mostly concrete, wood, and plaster. These little corners of shared garden were a nostalgic sight.

And Kakashi wasn't the only one enjoying the view.

How he had missed Sai, sitting there in the middle of a crop of sunflowers, Kakashi would never know. He stopped dead and hastily pulled up his mask. "What are you doing?"

Sai glanced up at him and raised a large art pad. "Drawing."

Kakashi let himself through the squeaking gate to approach. "May I see?"

"You may." Sai made one last dash with his pencil and turned the pad around for Kakashi to appraise his artwork.

It was, of course, a sketch of him and Kimiko kissing.

"Hey, wait a minute-" Kakashi moved to snatch the pad away, but Sai whipped it out of reach.

"Two hundred ryo," he said.

Kakashi narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"If you want the picture, it'll cost you two hundred ryo."

"Since when did you get so mercenary?"

"I have always been a mercenary. I have just been expanding my skills more lately," Sai held out his palm. "Two hundred ryo."

Reluctantly, Kakashi forked out two coins from his pouch and handed them over. Sai dutifully ripped off the top sheet and gave it to him, and Kakashi had to admit it was rather good. If the subject hadn't been so person, he would have been tempted to frame it.

Then he noticed the sketch that had been on the page beneath it. "You drew Sakura too?" he asked. "How long have you been sitting here?"

"Most of the afternoon," Sai told him, holding up the pad for him to see his sketch of Sakura. "I came to draw the sunflowers but more interesting subjects kept showing up."

The sketch of Sakura was a strong likeness, uncannily so. Sai had caught the sadness around her eyes perfectly... it was impossible to look at this sketch and not see the misery this girl was in, whether you knew her or not. "How much for this one?"

"It's not for sale," said Sai.

"Five hundred ryo."

Sai gave him a blank stare. "It is incredibly difficult to get Sakura to remain still for portraits, and this is the first where I am satisfied with the proportional representation of her forehead," he said. "It's not for sale."

"A thousand ryo."

Sai mutely held out his hand.

At least the good thing about someone like Sai was that there was no knowing or funny looks for handing over that much money for a sketch of his student. He was interested in only counting his coins as Kakashi examined the sketches. "It's good to see you Root types are busy keeping the village safe," he said with a slightly belligerent bite to his tone.

Sai paused and looked up at him. "Sarcasm," he deduced.

"Very good. And how much did you overhear between me and Sakura?"

Sai returned to his money. "Listening detracts from seeing, so I didn't hear anything about any baby while I was drawing."

"Sai," Kakashi began, feeling his temperature rise.

"I heard nothing, Kakashi-sensei." Sai got his feet smartly, disappearing the money into his pouch. "Thank you for your patronage of the arts."

* * *

The sight of the house she had grown up in was always enough to soothe a weary traveller, and Sakura found herself once again glad that her mother's house had been one of the few at the edge of the village that had remained standing after the final bomb. Maybe it leaned to the right more than it used to and the paint had been stripped in the heat of the blast, but Sakura was glad to see it at a time like this.

The front door was always open. Her mother never locked it, reasoning that in a town full of ninjas, there wasn't much point. Sakura let herself in, stepping out of her shoes in the porch and into the hall. For a moment she stopped there, savouring the smell of her old home and whatever was baking in the oven. It smelled like some kind of fruit pie – her mother had always had a sweet tooth.

"Hello?" she called, voice cracking but beginning to recover, "Mama?"

"Sakura?" Her mother appeared at the end of the hall with a spatula. "How was your mission? Normally you call first."

Her mother looked so pleased to see her that Sakura put her best effort into manufacturing a smile for her. However, it had quite the opposite effect on the older Haruno, whose delight began to fade as her spatula dropped to her side. "Oh goodness – what's happened?" she whispered.

"N-Nothing," Sakura replied, always perturbed by her mother's preternatural ability to read her feelings. "I just came round to say 'hi'."

The woman wasn't fooled for a second, and in fact Sakura wondered if that was exactly why this was the first place she had come after leaving Kakashi. This was the one person in the world who knew herand had always accepted her. She didn't want to open up to anyone right now and plead for sympathy and understanding, and with her mother she didn't have to. It was clear that with only one look at her daughter, Mrs. Haruno knew something terrible had happened, and Sakura felt unstoppable tears welling up that she had spent long months trying to hide.

"Oh, Kitten." Her mother came forward and pulled her into a hug. "Let's go into the kitchen and have some pie. It's better to talk with a full stomach."

* * *

TBC


	11. Time Lapse

**A/N:** No, you're not hallucinating - I updated! Hurrah! *flees from hurling rocks* I'm sorry!

* * *

**Scarlet Scroll**

Time Lapse

* * *

The ease with which she stepped back into routine was unexpected, though she didn't know what else she should have expected after returning to the village. She slotted back into her place at the hospital, back among the other displaced kunoichi who talked wearily about broken bones and chakra fusion during their working hours, but on coffee breaks discussed methods of mutiny with alarming frequency. Sakura had used to lead the charge on such discussions, but these days she stood back and listened to her friends and acquaintances talk, interjecting her opinion only if prompted for it.

The monotonous days began to merge again, and she appreciated the peace. She could almost imagine things were back to their relative state of normality, if not for the irritating little reminders that things would soon change. Reminders like Kakashi directing her to Root's private physician, who prodded and probed more invasively than even the checkpoint guards. Or reminders like bouts of queasiness when she was standing in line for food. Other than that, she was doing an excellent job ignoring her own condition.

Yes, Ino might have called her a sulky bitch at one point, and her mother was still troubled over what her daughter had described as nothing more than a 'bad day', but Sakura thought she was coping well.

It had to be said she was trying to keep out of Kakashi's way. She had glimpsed him around the village, sometimes waiting in line at a food stall, sometimes talking with colleagues... very occasionally sitting with the blonde kunoichi and looking like any number of other couples getting together for an afternoon drink. When Kakashi's notes arrived informing her of a new appointment with Root's physician, they were only ever delivered through her letterbox and never by hand, leading her to think she wasn't the only one engaged in avoidance tactics.

Not that it bothered her; she was quite glad to be away from Kakashi. He had witnessed her degradation and humiliation, and seeing him only reminded her, but she still couldn't deny that when she _did_ see him her gaze lingered, especially when he was within Kimiko. Maybe it was envy. His life and routine hadn't been disturbed and with his lover he looked about as happy as the notoriously taciturn man ever got. Seeing him like that threw stark relief on what Sakura felt she had lost by comparison, and that was reason enough to steer clear of him. That she also had roped him into her problems against his will made her feel quite strongly she had a duty to leave his life alone. This child only had to mess up one life, not two.

And while Kakashi was relatively easy to avoid, her pregnancy was not. She could avoid thinking about her pregnancy entirely if she bogged herself down with work and overtime, but the simple fact of the matter that as the first months trickled by and the worst of her already mild symptoms faded, another symptom was beginning to present itself that was rather more difficult to hide.

When she first switched from her usual medic tunic to favour a white coat over a black sweater, no one noticed. Fall was turning into winter and the colder weather provided a nice cover for choosing thicker, more encompassing clothes. A modest bump was normal for a woman, especially kunoichi no longer active in the field, and if it got bigger she entertained giving lofty excuses if anyone grew suspicious – claiming to have a parasite or a tumour might suffice. If things got really desperate she could start wearing a plastic blood-splatter smock at all times, notorious around the hospital for how unflattering they were, but that in itself might just raise more questions.

Her mother was more attentive to these things. Sakura had never been able to keep secrets from her for long, whether it was sneaking a snack right before dinner or just how dangerous some of her missions got. Her mother had always been supportive of her dream to be a kunoichi, even if she was the first in their family to cross into the world of the combat, but still Sakura tried to keep the ugliest side of her job from her mother. The woman always seemed to figure it out anyway. Sakura was sure her mother knew something dire had taken place on her last mission, but as long as Sakura refused to discuss it she kept her distance from that topic, for which Sakura was glad. She didn't want to have to start distancing her own mother too. Instead she found herself spending more time with her mother than ever.

"Your hair is getting long again," she said to Sakura one evening, as they shared dinner. There were only enough portions for one since Sakura had turned up unexpectedly, so now they were liberally supplementing the food with a large tub of ice-cream.

"It does that," Sakura said, running a hand through it and wrinkling her nose. "I need to cut it."

"I can do that if you like," her mother offered, and was up on her feet before Sakura could protest and point out that her mother's handling of a pair of scissors was unmatched except for that of a drunken squid. Even so, it was rather a lot of effort and money to go to a professional stylist, and at least her mother was free.

"Now how long would you like it?" asked her mother, returning with a comb and pair of scissors that could easily have passed for sheep shears. Positioning herself behind her daughter, she began measuring out a few inches from the bottom.

"I was thinking a bit shorter actually," Sakura said, licking copious amounts of melting ice cream off the back of her spoon.

"Like it was when you were young?"

"I'm still young, Mama."

"Of course you are, kitten. About here?" She ran her finger along Sakura's neck to show her the length, and Sakura tried to suppress the prickle of unease that ran down her spine. She didn't like people putting their hands near her throat, not even her own mother. "A bit shorter," she said.

"Here?" Her mother raised her finger another half inch.

"I was thinking more around here," Sakura said, pushing her mother's hand up to where her ear met her jaw.

"That short?" Her mother asked uncertainly. "You've never worn it that short, are you sure it would suit you?"

"Why not?"

"Tell you what," her mother began. "Why don't we cut it the normal length and see if you like that-"

"What's the problem? I want it short."

"I'm not sure you really want it _that_ short," said her mother.

"Yes, I do." _I can't even make decisions about my own hair now?_

"Look, all I'm saying is that we can take it up gradually and stop when you're happy." Her mother was combing her fingers through Sakura's hair absently, reminding her uncomfortably of the last person who had done that and how she had wanted to shave it all off afterwards. "Do you remember when Ino wanted short hair?" her mother carried on obliviously. "Then she went and freaked because she said it made her face look even longer-"

Sakura set down her spoon with a bang, snatched the scissors from her mother's hand, grabbed a hank of her own hair, and dashed the blades across it. She dropped the severed locks onto the table and there was rather more than she had meant to cut. Even so, she grabbed up her spoon and resumed eating. "See?" she said. "I don't care. Just cut it."

But her mother had been rendered silent in shock. She pocked listlessly at the violently short mess Sakura had made, before slowly putting down the comb, as if she didn't trust herself with it. "What," she began in a low, deliberate tone, "is _wrong_ with you?"

Sakura went cold. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"I don't know what to make of you anymore, Sakura, you behave so oddly these days!" This sounded like something her mother had been trying to get off her chest for a while.

"It's just hair, it grows back," Sakura argued emphatically.

"This is _not_ about the hair and you know it!" her mother said angrily. "You never smile – you never hang out with your friends – you don't care about your appearance anymore – and all that weight you've put on-"

"Mama!" Sakura rose to her feet angrily, wiping ice cream from her chin. "Leave off! I'm not a child you can boss around anymore!"

"You're still my daughter, and you think I don't know when something's wrong? You think I can't see that something's hurt you even though you won't tell me!" Tears were standing out in her mother's eyes, threatening to slide down her cheeks. "What happened to you, Sakura? Why are you so angry?"

"I am not angry!" She would have shouted, but the lump in her throat made it impossible. She could handle her mother's ire and her criticism, but not her tears.

"Yes, you are, you're angry all the time. Like you're angry with yourself. I'm not blind." Her mother took a breath to compose herself. "And I know when it started as well."

"_Don't..._ Mama," Sakura ground out.

"Don't _what_?"

_Don't stick your nose into this one._ "I have to go," she said suddenly, avoiding her mother's eye. "I forgot I have a date with Ino."

Her mother didn't buy it for one second and followed her down the hall. "What am I supposed to do if you won't let me help you?" she demanded. "Your own mother!"

"I don't need help, _mother_!" She slammed the door behind her and strode off with single-minded purpose between the dark rows of houses.

Well, there it was. She knew it was likely to happen eventually.

She'd pushed away the last person in the world who loved her.

* * *

Coffee just didn't taste like it used to, and there was a reason for it beyond Kakashi's naturally finicky nature. Coffee beans came from the continent, and the country with which Konoha normally traded was complaining about low yields, unpaid credit, and hostile trading tactics. The result? Now coffee was imported from somewhere else, somewhere where the climate wasn't quite as perfect for coffee plants as the other place, and now for twice the price, Kakashi's morning coffee had half the taste.

Danzou's regime pinched in the most unexpected of places.

"I'm sure societies have had revolutions over less," he said to Kimiko, though it seemed unbecoming to complain about coffee when she was suffering her own economic setbacks.

"I can't afford my own birth control anymore," she had told him last week, literally throwing up her hands in dismay after receiving the new bill. Previously, any pills and injections had been free, but Danzou's latest piece of wisdom was to start charging for contraception, at a price marked up roughly five hundred percent of its true price – for the sake of Konoha's economy, and its morals of course.

Kakashi had naturally offered to chip in and between them they could cover the costs, but then he was a senior jonin with a matching paycheque and if Kimiko, a senior within the W.D., could not afford her own birth control, then certainly the same was true for a large majority of women in Konoha.

"It's nothing to do with morals," Kurenai had told him and the other jonin in a matter-of-fact way, during one of their bi-weekly get-togethers in a secluded corner of the public house. "Danzou's playing it for the long-term. Him and his barons have been trying to figure out ways to increase the size of the military, and they need more people. They don't give a damn about women's virtue, they just want to see everyone breeding like rabbits. There's already the Family Incentive. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to ban birth control all together soon."

As he was pouring the rest of his coffee down the sink, Kakashi heard a noise behind him. Kimiko was easing into a chair at the breakfast bar, hair lying on one side of her head. Her eyes hadn't fully opened yet.

"Good morning," he said.

She blinked puffily at him. "I don't understand how you do it," she croaked, referring of course to his apparently supernatural ability to be clean, dressed, and bright eyed before eight.

"Toast?" he offered.

"Why not?" She pushed her hair to the other side of her head and slowly drew the mound of letters on the bar towards her. There was a nosy streak in Kimiko, he had discovered, as she leafed through his correspondence, although she was more interested in looking at the junkmail as if they were important pieces of communiqué.

Suddenly she read something else. "Did you know you can get five hundred ryo a month just having a baby these days?"

"So? It's just the Family Incentive. Danzou wants an army of toddlers, that's all." His thoughts immediately turned to Sakura. She would be getting four times what was suggested in the flywer, but then she was a rather special case.

"I make barely over five-twenty a month." She made a sound of exasperation. "I should just quit and get a baby."

This was not line of conversation he had ever hoped to have this early on in their relationship. "Someone might object to you just taking one."

"I'm sure there are other ways of getting one," she said, not looking at him.

"Trading in being a kunoichi for harder work and less pay? I don't think that's how it works." And to change the subject entirely, before another woman tried to suggest he repeat the worst mistake of his life. "What are your plans for today?"

"Oh, just meeting up with my sister for lunch... no big missions coming my way these days." She was undoubtedly about to complain about that point, as she had many times before, when there came a knock on the apartment door.

They both glanced at each other.

"It's ok, you can answer it" said Kimiko, desperately trying to flatten her hair into something with symmetry.

Kakashi crossed to the door and peered through the peephole. _Uh oh_, he thought, recognising the mop of pink hair filling the lens. _This can't be good_.

"Haruno-san," he greeted as he pulled open the door. "What a pleasant surprise."

He had only met Sakura's mother on a handful of occasions; examinations, graduations, and the very occasional chance encounter in the supermarket queue. He had always figured that she was what Sakura might be like in thirty years' time, having mellowed and softened a little with age. Although whether that could be true anymore...?

"I don't mean to disturb you, Kakashi-sensei," she said, peering past him to where Kimiko sat at the table, peering politely back. "But I really need to speak to you."

He cleared his throat, "Well, now is not exactly a good time-"

"Please," she said quietly, reminding him far too strongly of Sakura when she had something very serious to say. "It's about my daughter."

And that was precisely why he should just turn her away right now. Unfortunately, Kimiko decided this was precisely the time for an act of grace and selflessness that Kakashi could have done without. "I was on my way out anyway," she said, sailing past them with a polite nod towards Sakura's mother. To Kakashi she winked. "I'll catch you later."

After that, he really had no choice but to invite the older woman in. "Would you like something to drink?"

"No, thank you," she demurred, "but could we sit?"

With an inward sigh, Kakashi gestured towards the small sitting area. He took the armchair while she huddled to the edge of the sofa, fingers clasping and unclasping in her lap; the origin of one of Sakura's more noticeable mannerisms. She smiled at him politely, but it was a weak, distracted thing that quickly disappeared. Whatever she wanted to say, it was weighing almost visibly upon her. The building dread Kakashi could feel in the pit of his stomach was making him glad of his mask.

"I really am sorry about this," she began, lowering her eyes to her lap. "But I really don't know who else to talk to... I certainly can't talk to my own daughter. She won't let me."

"Is... everything ok with Sakura?" he hedged uncertainly. "I'll admit I've been busy. I've not been keeping up with her recently."

He hoped she might take the hint he was _not_ the person she needed, but clearly her mind had already been made up. "It doesn't surprise me," she said, with a faintly helpless shrug. "She's been pushing people away."

Kakashi remained silent.

"I want to know if there is something I should know...?" Mrs Haruno said.

His throat had gone dry. "Such as?"

"Such as what happened to my daughter," she said, fixing him with such a stare that let him know she was aware of his evasiveness.

"Have you discussed this with Sakura?"

"I told you, she won't let me. I tried to bring these things up but she just walked away. If I try to push it, she'll only end up further away than ever, and you're the only one I know of who might be able to explain."

"Why me?"

"Because it began after Sakura's last mission," said her mother, "with you."

"Well," he began slowly, "I know Sakura's expressed discontent over her work at the hospital. I suspect that might have more to do-"

"She used to complain endlessly about that, but she hasn't said a word against the hospital since her last mission with you. I know something happened then. I thought she would have been pleased to be given field work again, but she's said nothing about what happened during that mission-"

"Missions are always classified," Kakashi reminded her. "It's standard procedure."

Mrs Haruno scowled at him. "I know that, Kakashi-sensei," she said in clipped tones. "But it's not classified to simply express to your mother whether it went well or not. The fact that she didn't stop crying for two days gave me an idea as to which. You may call it mother's intuition, if you like."

"I see."

"And from what Sakura has told me about you over the years, you are not a man to adhere religiously to protocol when it goes against the wellbeing of someone in your care. In fact she seems to believe you are not one to follow protocol _at all_. So please... tell me what happened to my daughter. If you were on that mission with her, you must know."

He sighed, unable to look her in the eyes anymore. "Haruno-san, things aren't the way they used to be. One does not simply go against protocol these days."

Nostrils flaring in silent anger, Mrs Haruno stared him down. "You care more about rules than my daughter's life and happiness?"

"That's not what I'm saying. The Hokage has taken to using very thorough measures to ensure secrets are kept secret." He shrugged helplessly. "If I told you what happened on that mission, I would die."

Mrs Haruno opened her mouth to argue.

"It is simply a fact," he interrupted, "not an exaggeration. I would keel over where I sit now and you would still be none the wiser, so believe me when I say that I cannot help you, even though I want to."

Mrs Haruno was not a ninja. She wouldn't understand the technicalities of the binding jutsu he was under, and most civilians were simply not aware of how extreme and militaristic Konoha's shinobi had become under Danzou, but she was a smart woman. She believed him. She didn't question how or why Danzou could control people to such a degree, she simply accepted. Now she could only scrutinise her knees, as she tried to puzzle what or who to question next.

"I'm sorry you came all this way for so little," Kakashi apologised, starting to rise.

But Mrs Haruno refused to move. "Were you aware my daughter is pregnant?"

Kakashi froze. "Sakura's told you?"

"No," she said, head falling into her hands. "I've noticed... I've suspected... she looks like I did back when I was... but I wasn't certain until now. Don't ever play poker, Kakashi-sensei, you are far too easy to bluff."

He eased back into the armchair, resting his jaw against his knuckles. "You have quite the mother's instinct," he said, wishing this woman wasn't as damned clever as her daughter. "If you suspected Sakura's condition, then the only reason you came to me-"

"Was to try and reassure myself that my worst fears aren't true." She looked up at him, eyes shining brightly. "Was my daughter raped?"

The wise thing to do would be to reassure her as she wished to be. Of course not, he could say soothingly. He would never let anything like that happen to one of his subordinates while she was under his protection. He could spin a beautiful lie about a short-lived romance, and that Sakura was merely suffering from heartache because the love of her life and the father of this child had died while bravely battling to save her life from enemy nin.

But the words choked him. He couldn't cover up the brutal truth with a quaint little fairytale – and his hesitancy had already cost him. The longer he remained silent, the more Sakura's mother knew that whatever he was about to say was going to be a calculated manipulation. The distrust was already building in her face.

"Don't lie to me," she whispered. "Please don't."

Mrs Haruno was too clever for her own good. Even if she would never – _could_ never be told the details, she already knew what had happened to her daughter. She had only come to Kakashi for confirmation, and there was nothing he could say now that would convince her of a lie.

"Who did this?" she demanded.

Kakashi shook his head. "I can't tell you his name."

Her eyes searched his. "Then it was someone involved in your mission, otherwise you could." She had gone white now. "How is that possible?"

There was nothing Kakashi could trust himself to say.

"At least tell me justice was done?" she pleaded.

"I can't... because it wasn't." And the guilt gnawed at him every day. "And there's more than one man to blame."

"How can this be permitted?" she asked him, rising slowly to her feet. "How can this happen to my daughter and nothing be done about it – how can it be that no one can even talk about it?"

"We all had our orders, even Sakura."

"What the hell kind of orders are those?" she seethed. "What kind of _missions_ are they sending you people on?"

"Sakura's being taken care of," he said, trying to placate her. It was difficult when the anger and bewilderment he could hear in her voice were already so familiar to him.

"Is that what you call this?" Mrs Haruno shook her head, hair breaking loose from its careful bun. "I don't accept it!"

"It would be in Sakura's best interests if you did."

"You were supposed to protect my daughter. That's what teammates are for, isn't it? That's what you taught her? And yet you stood by and let this happen to her?"

"I did what I could," he said weakly.

"And where have you been for the last three months? Sakura needs her friends."

To that he truly had no response. Yes, he'd let Sakura down badly, but what was his alternative? Forcing himself into her life was just as bad, if not worse. He had no answers to give her mother, only excuses and apologies.

But the older Haruno would not wait for them. She had come in search of answers and help, and now she saw that Kakashi could provide neither. She wouldn't waste any more time on him. She looked away, as if she could no longer stand the sight of him, and strode off.

"Haruno-san," he called, standing sharply. "I know you're angry, but you mustn't talk about this with anyone."

"What?" She spun to narrow her eyes on him.

"If you're thinking of going over my head to get help from the administration, you'll only putting your life in danger. You'll put _Sakura_ in danger. You _have_ to keep this to yourself."

Shaking her head, she backed away from him. There was no way to tell what she was thinking – whether she believed him or she was too angry to trust him. She swept out the door in a heartbeat and slammed it in her wake, sending a judder through the small apartment.

Kakashi sank back into his armchair and pressed fingertips to a growing ache behind his temple.

* * *

"I would murder my own grandmother for a decent cup of coffee," grimaced Shikamaru, as he tried to suck the gritty aftertaste from his teeth. Coffee breaks had become something of an exercise in masochism these days, but where and how else was he supposed to get his caffeine fix? Long shifts guarding the Hokage tower needed some kind of fuel, after all, and there was very little about this job that he would consider stimulating. A waste of his considerable talents, some might say (Shikamaru primary among them) but that was what one got for being too close to the former regime.

"I doubt your grandmother's life would be worth much," said Sai, inspecting his sleeve for lint.

Unfortunately, Shikamaru's ANBU mask did not permit the other man to see the withering glare. "You're right," he said dryly. "Your life would be worth _much_ more."

"Empty, veiled threats," observed Sai impassively. "I have noticed such banter between males within close friendships. Are you wishing to become close to me?"

"Sai, the only reason I would get close to you is to stab you in the back more easily," Shikamaru deadpanned.

Sai looked at him. "I'll take that as a yes."

Shikamaru refrained from sighing – it would only invite further psycho-analysis. Instead he turned his attention back to the long hallway before them, two antechambers away from the Hokage's personal residence. They saw very little in this place. The Hokage rarely received visitors in his private rooms. The occasional 'Baron' sometimes passed through, and the same handful of retainers, but few else. There were no women, he noticed. Whatever else Danzou was, he was not interested in the fairer sex, and Shikamaru suspected that had more do with plain disinterest in anything but the machinations of power and leadership.

"If it's good coffee you want, there are still ways to get it," said Sai suddenly.

"Hm?"

"I think I know someone who might have some old stock lying around."

Folding his arms, Shikamaru lifted an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"I might be able to obtain some for a little compensation."

Shikamaru snorted. "When did you get into the blackmarket, Sai?"

"I do not understand. Danzou-sama has tasked me personally with investigating and prosecuting illegal trade, and I take my duties very seriously. I am only offering some personal stock as a favour to a close male friend," said Sai with what appeared to be a great deal of noble integrity.

"And how much would that be?"

"For a small bag? Five ryo."

Another scoff broke from Shikamaru. "Right. Tell you what – if you get me some, I'll give you six. Three for you and three for your supplier."

"I accept, although I have no supplier, just a friend with some old stock," Sai said. "And if you happen to require any other supplies or products that can no longer be legally obtained, please feel free to ask me. Discreetly, of course."

"I'm sure. You have a very well stocked friend, I imagine."

"He is... very fortunate."

"Hmm."

A door opened at the end of the hall. Both Sai and Shikamaru shifted casually into a more alert stance, moving to flank the door to Danzou's antechambers. The man approaching was a masked Root ANBU, but not one of particularly high status, although the way he sauntered along gave the impression that he believed he owned the place.

"State your business," Shikamaru called, suspecting a time-waster.

"It's certainly none of yours," rebuked the Root agent, hands wedged deep in his pockets. "I'm here to see the Hokage."

"Make an appointment," Shikamaru told him.

"I have information for the Hokage, and Danzou-sama personally asked me to alert him as soon possible," said the man. "Go on. Hop along and tell our great leader that Jin has some information regarding Hatake Kakashi, and that a little bird is pecking at the seed."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sai glance at him, but Shikamaru did not return it. He kept his reaction tightly under control, betraying no unease. He simply nodded stiffly and stepped through the door to the next antechamber, leaving Sai and the man named Jin behind him.

Another pair of guards waited in the next room. Shikamaru relayed the message to them and waited as one of the men took the message through to the next pair of guards in the antechamber beyond. Shikamaru waited, hoping that this silly dasisy chain of messengers meant that by the time the message reached Danzou it would be some garbled nonsense about Kakashi saying they needed more seed in the bird feeders. Undoubtedly what Jin had said was some sort of code... but Shikamaru no longer had his finger in the pie that was the intelligence division, and without a point of reference he had no idea of knowing what it referred to.

Eventually the guard returned. "Danzou will see him. Tell him to come through."

Shikamaru returned reluctantly to Sai and Jin, and fought the urge to tell the latter that it was Danzou's wish that he piss off. Instead, like a good loyal subordinate he gestured with his hand. "You may go in."

With a smugness that no ANBU mask could disguise, Jin strolled through, and Shikamaru and Sai were left in silence, out of the loop as ever.

"What do you suppose that was about?" Shikamaru muttered nervously.

"It sounded like code," said Said, unnecessarily.

"I know _that_. What does it mean?"

"It sounds like Kakashi-sensei has been under observation," Sai went on. "And I doubt someone would be making reports to the Hokage for positive behaviour. He is only interested in treason."

"Should we warn him?"

Sai shifted his stance. "If that is the case, it's already too late. Kakashi is being watched and we would only implicate ourselves."

Shikamaru clicked his tongue in annoyance. Inaction wasn't his style, but he knew better than to charge around like a headless chicken based on some unsubstantiated suspicions. "Who _was_ that guy?"

"Jin."

"You know him? He's Root, like you."

"Everyone is Root these days," retorted Sai, "even you."

"Yeah, but I like to know the difference between who was press-ganged and who joined because they're just a fan of fascism in general," Shikamaru said.

Sai smiled in that terribly insincere way of his. "Fascism is not inherently bad, and it does have its positive qualities. It is extremely efficient and-"

"And is Jin one of Danzou's lot or not?" Shikamaru interrupted.

Sai thought for a moment. "He is not one of the original Root. He's too undisciplined. But he is certainly loyal to Danzou."

Before Shikamaru could suggest once again that they go warn Kakashi, the door behind them swung open. Out swept Danzou, following by his usual parade of cronies and bodyguards, including Jin.

The Hokage fixed his singular bleak eye on Sai. "Summon Hatake Kakashi at once. I will see him in the office."

And he sounded downright _cheerful._

This time Sai and Shikamaru really did exchange a look. If Danzou was happy, Kakashi had gotten himself into some serious trouble.

* * *

Kakashi couldn't say he was surprised, but he could only wonder exactly how it had gotten back to the Hokage. His apartment was probably bugged – he had long suspected as much. But then he also couldn't rule out that he was being followed closely, and Danzou was certainly paranoid to actually pay his Rootlings to hiding in his bushes beneath his windows. His gaze slid over Jin, who was half hidden in the shadows, leaning against a wall. Kakashi really hoped he was the one who had been set the task of stalking him, since he knew for a fact that neighbour's cat liked to use the bush beneath his window as his personal litter box.

"Do you know why you are here, Hatake Kakashi?" asked Danzou, lifting a gouty foot up onto the stool provided for him. The barons were out in force. Every single chair in the little throne room was occupied, although there was no need for them all to be present. Kakashi imagined they hadn't been able to pass up this opportunity. They had all been waiting for this for a long time.

"I have some inklings," drawled Kakashi, keeping his hooded gaze levelled on Danzou. _I could blow him into another dimension in less than a heartbeat_, he thought_. I'd be killed a second later, but it might be worth it._ And he might have tried it too, if he wasn't so sure that every man in this room was at least twice as depraved and cruel as Danzou, with half the restraint to match, and might only be too glad to see Danzou assassinated.

"A little bird tells me someone has been asking questions," intoned Danzou, meeting Kakashi's stare unblinkingly, "about Project Seed."

"The little bird doesn't know what he's talking about," Kakashi said, shooting a blatant look at Jin. "Someone has asked me questions, but not about any secret projects. And I gave them no answers."

Danzou sneered. "Indeed, or you would not be alive to defend yourself."

"So this reprimand is pointless," Kakashi said bluntly. "May I leave now?"

"No," Danzou grunted. "That you performed your duty to the bare minimum and remained silent – that is not the issue. What matters is that someone is asking questions... and someone is attempting to pry into matters that do not concern them."

Jaw clenched and fists curled behind his back, Kakashi begged to disagree. "It is a mother's concern when her daughter has been raped."

"That was not Haruno Sakura's cover story. Her mother should not have been told this-"

"Her mother isn't a blind fool," Kakashi retorted. "She didn't need to be told."

Danzou tented his fingers before his mouth, in a sham display of considered deliberation. "Regardless. The project is compromised. Haruno Michiko is a threat. All that remains is to decide what should be done about it."

"She is no threat! She is a civilian who is merely concerned for her daughter – she knows nothing-"

"Exactly why she is so dangerous. There's nothing quite like an angry mother trying to protect her child from phantoms of her own imagination. Such things have built and ruined nations before – don't make the mistake of assuming this little busy-body does not have it in her power to bring the whole project crashing down upon our ears. That is not a risk we can take. If other villages catch wind of our program, it'll mean war, and we are not yet ready for such an eventuality."

An eventuality. Danzou didn't hide his ambitions well. He would slither away from a fight until the day he knew he held the upperhand – then all his noble talk about maintaining peace would be thrown to the ground and Danzou would not be satisfied till he either controlled all of the villages, or he had destroyed Konoha in the process.

"Haruno Michiko is not the one you need to worry about," Kakashi said quietly. There were a hundred other people Kakashi could name on the spot who posed a more direct and conscious threat to the Hokage, himself included.

Danzou was unmoved. "Better to be safe than sorry," he said, waving a hand loftily. "No loose ends. She must be terminated."

In this room there was no angry outcry. No splutters of protest at the suggestion that the Hokage order the assassination of a Konoha citizen whose only crime was to be a concerned mother. Kakashi looked around, astonished at the lack of reaction, and all he saw was a circle of faces, watching him closely, more interested in _his_ reaction than questioning the morality of the order.

He could blow up. He could scream at the Hokage and all his useless, greedy barons, get himself sent to prison where he might eventually be executed but be secure in the knowledge that he had stood up for what was right. But then the execution order would be handed to someone else; Jin most likely.

And so there was no other course of action. Blankly, Kakashi shrugged. "If you insist."

"You will have to discreet," the Hokage said, smiling at the discomfort he knew Kakashi was feeling and trying hard to hide. "It would do no good for Haruno Sakura to know of her mother's demise. Such stress is never good for pregnant women, and we need a strong, healthy child."

Blinking slowly, his gut crawling with contempt, Kakashi said, "It can be arranged."

"Then what are you waiting for?" asked Danzou.

"I will need assistance. Disposing of bodies is not my speciality."

The Hokage sniffed dismissively. "Jin will assist you."

"I thought you wanted discretion. Jin has all the subtlety of a rutting elephant."

The Hokage may have wanted to argue, but even he could not make such a bald-faced assertion that Jin was appropriate for such a task. "And who do _you_ have in mind?" he asked.

"There's a man named Tenzou, he works in the original ANBU division. He's discreet and he'd save me half a night of digging a grave."

Danzou rubbed his mouth speculatively. "The one who was spliced with the DNA of the first Hokage? A friend of yours no doubt."

"I will do your dirty work, but I will use the people I trust, no one else."

After a moment of consideration, Danzou gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I see no reason why not. If you both perform your duty admirably, I may even offer your friend a promotion into Root."

Wouldn't Tenzou just be delirious with joy to hear of it? "I'll be sure to let him know," he said evenly, knowing full well the Hokage thought the best way to keep an eye on unknowns was to keep them close.

"Then you may go. Do this one task and we'll say no more about this."

Kakashi gave a short, jerky bow, and stalked out. He didn't waste any time dithering or debating. He set a course for ANBU headquarters with grim, single-minded purpose. Most people who saw him coming were wise enough to scuttle out of his way. Hatake Kakshi rarely moved with purpose. People knew something had to be up when the jonin came striding past without a book or a slouch to be seen.

He found Tenzou in the cafeteria, smiling porcelain mask resting on the table next to his plate. There were few joys in the life of ANBU. Vegetarian burgers were evidently one of Tenzou's judging by the expression on his face as he lifted one to his lips.

Kakashi slapped it out of his hands.

"Oh, not you," Tenzou sighed, upon recognising him after the initial shock had worn off. "I thought I was free of you."

"I have a job for you, and you're not going to like it."

Tenzou looked down at his spoilt meal. "I never do."

* * *

Sakura forced herself to put the scissors down. It was better to stop now before she clipped herself bald. Her hair was more or less even now, but far shorter than she'd ever had it before. It curled around the tops of her ears and left the back of her neck exposed to the air. It felt strange, but she supposed she would have to get used to it – it was her own fault for being so hasty with the scissors. She might be able to carry it off thanks to her long neck, but whatever people thought of her, it felt better. _I'm not the same person_. It was better that she no longer looked like she was.

Checking her watch, Sakura brushed off the last of the pink strands covering her lap and rose. She had to visit her mother and apologise for last night. She had a few stock excuses – stress at work, or depression, neither of which were total lies. And if that didn't work, Sakura could always finally break the news that she was pregnant. That would definitely distract her mother for a while.

Pulling on her coat (a flared one that was ideal for masking pregnancy bumps and shoplifting) Sakura stepped outside and began to make her way to her mother's house. It was getting on towards evening, and with winter setting in it was already dark. There was enough of a chill in the air to make Sakura pull the ends of her sleeves over her hands to keep her fingers warm, and she picked up her pace.

But she slowed as her mother's house came into sight. Most of the houses on the street had some lights on, but her mother's house was totally dark. Was she in? Sometime she spent the evenings with friends but wouldn't she have mentioned plans yesterday?

The house was silent too, she realised, when she climbed up the stairs to the porch. She rang the doorbell a few times but it echoed emptily.

"Great," she muttered quietly to herself, and poked the nearest flowerpot with her foot. The key her mother hid under there for emergencies was missing. It was just Sakura's luck that her mother had finally taken her advice that leaving keys in such obvious places wasn't a good idea. There was at least a stray flyer caught in between the twigs of her ornamental cherry bush (her mother had always had a thing for Sakura blossoms), and Sakura plucked it free and began to hunt through her pockets for a pen to leave a message on the back. It was succinct and to the point, letting her mother know that she'd been by and that she wanted to talk. It was slightly annoying to have to write it on the back of a propaganda flyer about how one might profit from having a baby. _And I suppose if the flyer doesn't sway anyone, they'll just send them a scarlet scroll._

After slipping the flyer through the letterbox, she paused, feeling something tickle the periphery of her senses. Turning, she scanned the street. It was empty, but after just a few moments she caught movement. A man was standing in the shadows shy of the street light opposite, and a sliver of white revealed a mask where his face should be.

Sakura recognised him at once. She'd never seen his face but she'd had months to learn the signature of his posture and gait, and the way he had been able to make her skin crawl just by walking into the room.

She had hoped she would never have to see him again.

"Fancy seeing you here," said Jin, as if he hadn't been trying to mask his presence from her. "Almost didn't recognise you. You look like a boy now."

Sakura could no longer be provoked by such obvious goading, not when she was more concerned that she'd have to walk past him to leave. "What are you skulking around here for?" she asked, voice hard and unwelcoming.

"It's a free village," he said.

"Is it?" she sneered, descending the steps. "And it's just a coincidence that you're following me?"

"Who said I was following you?" Jin spread his hands, a mockery of affronted innocence.

Sakura liked the idea that he was staking out her mother's house even less. "_What_ are you doing here?" she demanded again.

"Now, now. Ladies in your condition should not get so excited. It's bad for the baby."

Sakura's fists clenched within the hidden folds of her sleeves. "I had to tolerate you in Otafuku Gai, but that mission is over. But don't push me. Not here. I have no reason not to hold back and spare your life anymore, and I don't think many people would be too moved if you were found floating face down in the river tomorrow. A guy like you can't have too many friends."

Jin laughed. It was a normal enough laugh, but to Sakura's ears it was like scraping nails down a blackboard. "You're adorable. Really. Maybe it's the new hair, but I almost believe you. Aren't you going to ask me where your mother is?"

Sakura's world went very still. Her mother was just out with friends, wasn't she? Why had Jin made it sound like something had happened... "You stay away from my mother," Sakura said in a low voice.

"No problem there, sweetheart. Although I do hope you didn't have a falling out with her... that would be such a shame."

Sakura's glared ferociously. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, I've really said too much," Jin chuckled and began to slouch away, blowing her an imaginary kiss from his unmoving porcelain smile.

Sakura didn't take her eyes off him until she truly believed he was leaving. She shot one last leery look at her mother's quiet house before slowly making her way home. She stuck close to the phone for the rest of the evening, calling her mother's number at intervals while knowing full well that it was perfectly reasonable not to expect an answer. If her mother had gone out with friends she wouldn't be back till late, and she would probably be tipsy and tired and likely to ignore the phone.

At half-ten, she put the receiver back in its cradle, wondering at how easily Jin had put fear back into her life. He was a true bully and a certified sociopath. She could see how he might have gotten bored and turned to playing mind games with her to amuse himself. He was probably looking to get promoted by Danzou for going above and beyond the call of duty, since his job seemed to involve making her life miserable.

Sakura decided it wasn't worth flying into a full-on panic until tomorrow. In the mean time she would have a shower and go to bed, and maybe eat the rest of that box of pastries that was supposed to be shared between at least three people.

Grabbing a fresh set of towels and her favourite nightgown from her bedroom, she shuffled through to the bathroom. The heater awoke with a snap at her coaxing, and soon the room was filled with scented steam. Short hair was much easier to wash, she decided, rubbing her soap through it. Occasionally her hand passed over her belly, but only to spread the soapy suds over her skin in a perfunctory way. It was getting harder to ignore her own body, but she would damn well try, right up until the day the contractions started most likely.

Satisfied that all kinds of dirt and stress had been washed down the plughole, Sakura turned the water off and groped for a towel. When she snapped it open to drape it around herself, something fluttered to the ground. A receipt? She picked it up listlessly, intending to screw it up and toss it in the trash can. Then she read it.

_You're out of milk. You should get some more, asap._

Sakura stared at it for a good long time. She may have even voiced an audible "_What?_"

Towel secured around her body, Sakura stomped through her apartment to find the fridge, wrenching it open with undue animosity. She had bought a fresh pint of milk only yesterday, but now there was a rather obnoxious gap between her yoghurt cartons where it had once been. Sakura slammed the door shut again and scowled at the fridge magnets that pinned several years worth of outdated reminders and contact numbers.

Someone had been in her apartment.

Someone was also trying to tell her something.

Sakura returned to her bedroom to finish drying her hair, but instead of pulling on her nightie, she collected her clothes from the floor and began to dress herself once more.

* * *

There was only one twenty-four hour supermarket in Konoha, and it was surprisingly small, catering only to those odd emergencies when you needed a new can opener at midnight. Sakura thought grocery shopping during the day was a pretty unpleasant experience, but after hours it was worse, like she was wandering into the opening scene of a horror film or a zombie apocalypse. The supermarket was deserted. Only one very tired and very bored looking attendant was sitting at the tills, spinning in slow, dreary circles upon his chair.

Sakura would be very annoyed if she discovered she was wasting her time. With a basket hooked over her arm and set off down the aisles, heading straight for the dairy section. Each row she passed was empty, because only mad people and Sakura did their shopping at this hour. Maybe she had misunderstood the note. But then why would someone steal her milk and leave a note such as to inform her of the evil deed, and leave it in such a place that she was bound to find it at a particular time?

There was the sign for 'milk'. Sakura steeled herself and rounded the corner.

And finally she found the only other customer in the shop, standing by a row of cheeses and reading the labels very carefully. It was quite likely that he had been there for some time.

An unexpectedly fierce rush of feelings crashed through Sakura's stomach. She _had_ mostly been avoiding this man for the last few months. She _was_ most likely carrying his child. And he'd also probably stolen her milk. 'Fiend' was not a strong enough word to describe him.

Sakura drew up beside Kakashi, facing a line of milk bottles as if she was trying to decide which to get. "I assume there's a good reason why you're burglarising my home instead of calling me on the phone like a normal person?"

"Your house is probably bugged," said Kakashi, replacing a wheel of goat's cheese. He glance over at her, and she noticed he did a double-take at the sight of her hair.

"I wouldn't respect Danzou's intelligence if it wasn't."

"Were you followed here?" Kakashi evidently decided not to comment on her new do.

She shook her head. "I've seen Jin around, but I think I would have noticed if he had followed me here. What's this about?"

"Your mother confronted me this morning. She was asking questions about your last mission..."

Sakura looked at him sharply. "What did you tell her?"

"I couldn't tell her anything. But she'd already figured out enough on her own..." Kakashi leant his arm against a shelf of halloumi. "She knows you're pregnant. She believes you were raped, Sakura."

"But I wasn't," she blurted.

Kakashi was staring at her uncomfortably. He wasn't going to contradict her out loud, but she knew he disagreed. Maybe he was right, but she couldn't label her experiences yet, not in such strong terms. It was still too difficult to sort through. Rape was something that happened to innocent, blameless people, and Sakura wasn't sure she counted as one of them. Blameless people weren't supposed to feel so much guilt, right?

"Danzou found out," Kakashi told her. "He thought she was getting too close to the truth."

She swallowed hard. "Where is my mother, Kakashi?"

"He ordered me to kill her and hide it from you."

Her stomach dropped. "You didn't," she whispered.

Kakashi frowned and reached out to flick her forehead. "What do you take me for?" he sighed. "You're mother's going into hiding. I called you out here because I thought you'd like to say goodbye."

It was like being punched in the gut, except she might have been able to defend against a punch. "But I only spoke to her yesterday..."

"Danzou likes his leaks plugged fast."

She swallowed. "It's my fault," she whispered, biting her lip. "If I hadn't made her so angry, she wouldn't have-"

"You're not to blame yourself," Kakashi interrupted sharply. "We don't really have time for that, for a start... she's waiting for you."

"Where?"

"In the evacuation tunnels. The sooner she's out of here, the better."

Still reeling and blinking rapidly, Sakura nodded. "Take me to her."

The evacuation tunnels ran straight into the mountainside that encircled Konoha. Back when Pain had attacked the village, it was where the majority of the village's civilians had taken shelter. Even when the explosion hit that levelled three quarters of the village in less than a minute, the tunnels had remained intact. Thousands of lives had been saved.

Since then they'd been boarded up and sealed. With the village's growing homelessness problem, the tunnels had become an attractive shelter for squatters with no where else to go. Danzou had found that quite distasteful and quickly put a stop to it. But there were hundreds of tunnels, and the administration couldn't maintain the seals on all of them.

Kakashi led her through the backstreets, keeping to the narrowest alleys behind that houses that were lined with ancient wooden gates and filled with old bikes, weeds and territorial cats. The rocky faces of the Hokage were soon above them, looming down with intense disapproval. Plans were being made to put Danzou's face up there so he could scowl oppressively down on Konoha for the rest of creation, but it seemed a little unnecessary to Sakura. She was of the opinion that Danzou's face already looked so much like a solid slab of craggy rock , it would be difficult to distinguish it from the original mountainside.

"This way." Kakashi guided her towards the buildings that crowded the base of the rockface. Most of them were old, having barely survived the Great Invasion – barely liveable but intact enough to have been left out of the restoration. What had once been people's homes, shops, and tourist information points were now little more than dilapidated shacks slumped against the mountain like tired old men. The trees and bushes were savagely overgrown. They at least provided excellent cover to work their way between the buildings.

The tunnel entrance lay underneath one of the buildings. Before the invasion it had probably been the home of a wealthy official who liked having his own personal escape route. Now Kakashi shoved open the broken wooden shutters to beckon Sakura down into a sunken basement where no light penetrated.

"I can't see," she complained.

Wordlessly, Kakashi's hand grabbed hers in the dark and pulled her carefully across the crunchy, earthen floor till they came to a cold, clammy wall of rock.

"The entrance is here," he said, and then added dountfully, "It's pretty narrow though."

She caught the insinuation. "I'm still skinnier than you," she muttered, groping to gauge the width of the crack in the rock wall, before carefully sliding inside. Kakashi refused to release her hand, as if he was worried she would fall. Fortunately after the initial squeeze she found the tunnel had been widened and was clearly manmade. She could move freely, if at a bit of a crouch. "My mother's really through here?"

"A little ways in," he said. "Just keep following the tunnel and you'll find her."

Sakura hesitated. "You're not coming?"

"I'll guard the entrance and make sure no one followed us." Maybe he just couldn't fit through the gap. "Go to your mother."

"Ok. Thank you."

She felt his hand squeeze hers and then was released. Sakura touched a hand to a slimy wall on either side of her and began to make her way slowly, carefully, into the mountain. She moved with a detached feeling, like she still wasn't sure she believed this was all happening. _I really did only speak to her last night_, she thought, still half convinced that her mother was with her friend, probably sitting round someone's kitchen table with a glass of wine in one hand and a morsel of cheese in the other while she barked in laughter over someone's embarrassing anecdote. Her mother had never been part of this world of the shinobi. It wasn't possible to occupy two worlds at once, was it?

Gradually she became aware that the sounds she was hearing weren't just the faint whistle of wind through the tunnels. She could hear voices too, steadily growing louder as she neared them, and a warm light now glimmered ahead of her.

"... I just don't think the mask helps."

"Why not? Girls like mysterious men in masks."

"Sometimes. Mostly they just assume you're ugly."

"What about when you're off duty? Where do you normally meet girls?"

"At work mostly."

"Hmm. I met Sakura's father at a dance. Do you dance?"

"I've been advised against it."

"Girls like a good dancer. If you know how to move your feet, it makes them think you're good at other things too, even if you're not."

"Was Sakura's father a good dancer?"

"Oh. The best."

"Mama?" Sakura called out. Ahead of her, the light flicked and two figures stood.

"_Sakura_!" Warm arms and familial smell enveloped Sakura. Her mother was crying, and she was as well it seemed, and they hung tightly to one another for a long time until they finally sank to the ground, fruitlessly trying to brush away each other's tears.

"I'm so sorry," Sakura said. "I'm sorry."

"This is all my fault. If I'd just kept my mouth shut!" Her mother shook her head angrily. "You were trying to protect me but I had to go and put my foot in it!"

"No, I should have tried to talk you before... you weren't to know." Sakura looked to the blurry figure behind her mother, the one holding the lantern aloft. He wore an ANBU mask, but wasn't from the Root division. "Captain Yamato?"

"He's been so kind and patient, trying to explain things to me," said her mother. "I'm afraid I don't think I'll ever understand entirely, but I appreciate the risk he's taking."

"It's no problem, ma'am," he said, somewhat bashfully. "You two will want to say your goodbyes... I'm going to scout the tunnels ahead. I'll be back when I'm sure the path is clear."

"Thank you," Sakura called to him softly as he departed, leaving the lantern behind.

Her mother sat back with a tremulous sigh. "Oh, Sakura..." she said, clutching her daughter's hands tightly in her own. There was too much to say and ask, and not enough answers or time. How did they even start this conversation?

"I really stepped in it this time, didn't I?" her mother joked weakly. "Remember when I said the neighbour's new baby looked like a frog and he overheard? I thought that was bad. At least now I don't have to see him again. And I guess I don't have to pay off the mortgage anymore."

"...bright side to everything," Sakura whispered, trying to smile too but her mortification was still too fresh. "Mama, I'm so sorry."

"I knew Danzou was a sorry replacement for Tsunade-sama, but I never thought such men could exist in this day and age..." Her mother lifted her hands to cradle her daughter's cheeks. "What are you wrapped up in, Sakura? What did he make you do?"

Sakura couldn't answer.

"It's ok, I know you can't tell me much." The older Haruno rubbed her thumbs across Sakura's wet cheeks "A mother should be able to protect her child and I've failed you so badly. I shouldn't be leaving you like this..."

She knew what her mother was referring to. "I wanted to tell you. But I was such a coward, I didn't know how or when, and I waited too long," she whispered, her voice breaking as she dashed her sleeve against her runny nose. "What I am supposed to do without you, Mama? I can't deal with this on my own."

Her mother hugged her fiercely. "You won't be alone as long as you don't want to be alone. You have friends who care for you, you just have to let them. You have to put the bad things behind you," she said, placing a warm hand against the gentle curve of Sakura's stomach. "You can't let them rule your life from the past, and whatever this vile man did to you... _you_ are the parent of this child, not him. That's all that matters."

"No, Mama," Sakura said heavily, drawing back. "There was a man, but he's not the father."

Her mother's eyes searched her face.

Sakura's mouth worked, but the words wouldn't come, as if a snake was coiled around her throat and tongue, constricting her voice. All she could say safely was, "He's a good man."

She saw her mother's eyes tighten ever so fractionally and dart past Sakura briefly as she calculating exactly how many 'good men' she knew had been on that mission with Sakura.

She was a smart woman.

"You'll be ok," she said softly. "I know you will, because you're my daughter, and Haruno women are all as stubborn as each other."

"Where are you going to go?" Sakura asked her.

"Dear Tenzou says he's going to build me a house somewhere nice and far away and out of mind, probably near some other town. I don't want him to go to too much trouble, but he says it's no problem. He's a very agreeable young man, though rather unlucky in love it sounds."

"I wish I could go with you," Sakura said faintly.

"Why don't you?"

"Danzou wants you to disappear, and that's why you'll be able to... but he has plans for me. He wouldn't let me go so easily."

Her mother nodded sadly. "Don't lose hope, Sakura. Things will change... Naruto will come back, you'll see, and he'll bring an army with him."

"He'll need to."

Footsteps along the tunnel alerted them to Tenzou's return. Sakura's heart squeezed in her chest. It was too soon. She hadn't had enough time.

"The way's clear," he said, picking up the lantern. "We should go now while we have the chance."

Sakura fretfully hugged her mother for the final time.

"We'll see each other again soon, Sakura. I fully intend to see my first grandchild. Not even Danzou can deprive me of that right."

"Of course," Sakura sniffed. "I'll miss you."

"I'll think of you every day." Her mother was trying to smile but failing badly. "I love you."

Sakura nodded, unable to trust that she could open her mouth without sobbing. Tenzou touched a hand to her mother's shoulder, gently urging her to follow him. Her mother turned back to look at her many times, but soon the curves and dips of the tunnel took her from sight, and the light faded soon after.

Sakura took several minutes to compose herself before heading slowly back up the tunnel to where Kakashi was waiting. He needlessly helped her through the entrance once more and led her out of the basement. Out in the open air again, Sakura took a deep breath, inhaling the cold, crisp smell of the night. She looked up and saw the stars peaking through the gaps in the clouds and suddenly she was too tired to move. In the nest of ivy at the base of the mountain, she sat down.

"It's done then?" Kakashi asked.

"It's done," she agreed quietly, watching the heavens shift overhead. "How did you do it?"

"It's not hard to fake a death," he said. "I made sure Jin was following me. I visited your mother, put sedative in her tea, took her 'body' to the graveyard with Tenzou and had him bury her. He's good at shifting earth... good at making impromptu underground bunkers and tunnels. I think your mother was a bit shocked at waking up underground, but I had a clone down there with her to explain things. It can't be easy for her, especially without knowing half of what's going on, but she was very cooperative. She's in good hands with Tenzou."

Sakura turned her gaze to his. "Fooling Jin is easy enough, but I don't think Danzou will be fooled for a second. He'll know you didn't do it."

He nodded grimly. "Probably."

"If he wants to, he'll find her and he'll kill her. She's not safe, Kakashi, but I couldn't tell her that..."

Kakashi moved to sit down in the ivy beside her. He found her hand and covered it lightly with his larger, warmer one. "It's not about her Sakura, you know that. Danzou's only interested in punishing you and me, but he won't push too hard. He doesn't gain much by turning your mother into a martyr. This is probably his idea of a warning."

"You seem sure," she observed.

"Danzou's ruthless and his methods have always been questionably extreme, but he's not one to throw away his advantages out of vindictive spite. From his point of view, your mother is more valuable alive. Now he can hold her life over your head to ensure your cooperation, because now you know what's at stake." Kakashi craned his head to look up at the stars as well. "It's what I would do... if I was tyrannical despot."

"You say that, but I remember when you used to push twelve year olds into freezing rivers to teach them how to swim," she pointed out.

He shrugged. "You learned how to swim, didn't you?"

She snorted and fell silent, feeling some of the tension ease from her stiff shoulders. "I hope Danzou's as clever as you think he is."

Kakashi gave a bemused sort of laugh. "Strange thing to hope for, but yeah..." He gave her hand one last squeeze and climbed to his feet. "Come on. It's cold and you need to get home, and I'm sixty percent sure we're sitting in poison ivy."

Sakura rolled to her knees and rose, patting down her coat.

"Do you want me to walk you back?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes. "I think I can be trusted to remember where I live," she reminded him.

"Ok," he said backing off. "Don't worry about your mother. Tenzou will take care of her, and once things settle down we'll figure out ways you can visit her."

"Sure," she said quietly.

"And I like your hair."

It took Sakura a moment to register what he'd said. For the first time she felt self-conscious, and lifted a hand to touch her shorn locks. "Thank you," she said, even quieter than before.

He couldn't possibly have seen her blush in this darkness, but he seemed to sense her embarrassment nevertheless and quickly backed off. "I'll see you around, Sakura."

_Maybe in another three months_, she thought, if their current level of contact was anything to go by.

An awkward moment followed, as if neither were sure quite how to say goodbye. A handshake was too formal for two people having a child together but a hug was far too intimate for a pair who had barely spoken for so long. No one had thought to invent social rules for people like them, which was rather inconsiderate.

"Good bye, Kakashi." They settled on a awkward wave and went their separate ways. He would return to Kimiko, no doubt, who would remain ignorant that her lover was an expecting father, and Sakura would return to her empty apartment and figure out how she was supposed to cope with this new mother-shaped hole in her life.

* * *

TBC


End file.
